Murderous Maths
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Murderous Maths is a series of British educational books by author Kjartan Poskitt. They are also published and available in India now. The books teach maths, spanning from the simple (such as 1 + 1 = 2) to the complex (such as the quadratic formula). The books are written in a similar style to the Horrible Histories, Horrible Science and Horrible Geography in the informal manner the books are written in (but with a bit more humour), involving evil geniuses, gangsters, love stories and smelly burgers.
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[edit] Titles
The following are the books that are currently released in the series. These first two books do not cover any particular topics; rather, they were originally proposed to stand alone as an interesting read. The first two books were originally part of The Knowledge until a complete series was proposed.[1]
- Murderous Maths, ISBN 0-439-01156-6
- More Murderous Maths, ISBN 0-439-01153-1
- The Essential Arithmetricks: How to + - × ÷, ISBN 0-439-01157-4
- The Mean & Vulgar Bits: Fractions and Averages, ISBN 0-439-01270-8
- Desperate Measures: Length, Area and Volume, ISBN 0-439-01370-4
- Do You Feel Lucky?: The Secrets of Probability, ISBN 0-439-99607-4
- Vicious Circles and Other Savage Shapes, ISBN 0-439-99747-X
- Numbers: The Key To The Universe, ISBN 0-439-98116-6
- The Phantom X: Algebra, ISBN 0-439-97729-0
- The Fiendish Angletron: Trigonomogeometry, ISBN 0-439-96859-3
- The Perfect Sausage and other Fundamental Formulas, ISBN 0-439-95901-2
- Codes: How to Make Them and Break Them, ISBN 0-439-94328-4
Three related puzzle books have been published as well:
- Professor Fiendish's Book of Diabolical Brain-benders, ISBN 0-439-98226-X
- Professor Fiendish's Book of Brain-benders (a smaller version of the above)
- Sudoku: 100 Fun Number Puzzles, ISBN 0-439-84570-X
- Kakuro and Other Fiendish Number Puzzles, ISBN 0-439-95164-X
[edit] Recurring characters
There are a number of recurring characters in the MM books. These include:
- Captain Cancel and his Valiant Vector Warriors
- Thag the Mathemagician
- Urgum the Axeman, Grizelda the Grisly, Hunjah and other barbarians
- Professor Fiendish and his pet pig, Truffles
- The Fogsworth family, including the Duchess, the Colonel, Auntie Crystal, Rodney Bounder, Primrose Poppet, Binky Smallbrains, Lord Binkiebott Marmalade Fogsworth and Croak the Butler
- Pongo McWhiffy, disgusting Hamburger seller, and Veronica Gumfloss ( his crush
- Riverboat Lil and Brett Shuffler
- Sheerluck Homes (parody of Sherlock Holmes)
- The Boccellis (Blade, Paul 'Porky' and 'One Finger' Jimmy), the Gabriannis ('Weasel', 'Chainsaw' Charlie, 'Numbers' and 'Half-Smile') and Dolly Snowlips
- The Evil Gollarks (from the planet Zog)
- The Great Rhun of Jepatti, and his Ghinji
- Kumar in his curry restaurant, The Ravenous Rajah
- The Pure Mathematicians (Janet, Matt Kimpton and Tom Winch [the identity of the final pure Mathematician is unknown]. Apparently named after a real-world teacher and a pair of real-world pure mathematicians, respectively.)
- Luigi, in his restaurant (called Luigi's Diner), with Benni - the only place the gangsters go: they are the only customers for obvious reasons.
[edit] Spin-Offs
- Killer Puzzles (Written by Kjartan Poskitt)
