UNCOMMON MYSTERIES: Mark Cohen, The Fractal Murders (2002)

           The Fractal Murders gets its name from Fractal Geometry, a branch of mathematics that attempts to tame and measure seemingly random variations in such things as coastlines and stock market prices. A mathematician at the University of Colorado, a specialist in Fractal Geometry, finds that three other specialists in this tiny field have died under mysterious circumstances, and she hires a private investigator when the FBI brushes her off. It sounds like an academic mystery, but really it’s a procedural—not a police procedural, but a private investigator procedural.

            The author is Mark Cohen—no relation of mine—and he took to heart the old advice: “write about what you know.” His detective, Pepper Keane, lives in Nederland, Colorado, in the mountains above Boulder—so does the author. Pepper Keane was a marine in the Judge Advocate General office; Cohen was an Air Force Judge Advocate. Keane practiced law for a while and then gave it up to buy a house in the mountains and start a small private investigating business. Cohen lives in a house in the mountains but still practices law in Boulder.

            Procedurals get their interest from the details of a developing investigation.  Unlike the hard-boiled type of mystery story, where the hero is often literally hit on the head with clues, and unlike the Sherlock Holmes type mystery, where the solution comes in a series of brilliant deductions, procedurals move slowly, and we have time to meet the main character and his friends, time to learn about his past and sympathize with his attempts to get close to the romantic interest—which in this book is an attractive math professor.

            Meanwhile we get some local color about Boulder and the surrounding mountains. This is a first book for Cohen, and probably not as smooth as it could be. But it has some exciting moments and a nice twist to the plot at the end.

            If you like the main character, you’ll like the book. Pepper Keane is a complicated character, an ex-Marine with a short haircut who’s a vegetarian and a sucker for animals, a man who likes exercising with a heavy bag and serious sparring with his brother and other jocks, but who is also working his way through Heidegger’s Being and Time, one difficult page at a time, because he’s still looking for answers to the big questions and because reading philosophy seems to help counter his depression.

            In short, the main character is interesting, the plot idea is unusual, and I think you might like it.