Murder at the Margin

If you enjoy the most hackneyed cliches of mystery novels, prose so clumsy you would swear it was written by a non-native speaking high-school student, cardboard characters and deus ex machina solutions, then this is the perfect book for you. If you think the economic picture of human beings as perfectly rational utility optimisers is not merely a useful theoretical construct, but a perfectly accurate portrayal of the entire human psychology, then you will enjoy finally reading authors who agree with you. And if you giggle uncontrollably at crude, right-wing jabs at the humanities, ethics, racial equality, socialism, feminism, unions, social movements, and altruism, and take comfort in the world reasuringly portrayed through a thick smudge of colonialist libertarian conservatism, this novel will please you to no end.For everyone else my hearty recommendation is to avoid spending time or money on one of the very worst books I have ever had the misfortune to read. The novel's redeeming quality is its noble ambition of introducing and illustrating economic theory in a popular form. Its execution of that ambition is a spectacular failure.

I started this book because of its setting. St. John USVI is one of my favorite places to visit, and I couldn't resist a mystery in that island. I was not disappointed on the descriptions of St. John and the intriguing mystery. Bringing in economic theories to solve the mystery was clever and brilliant. My only fault with Breit and Elzinga (Marshall Jevons) is that they price their books too high for me to buy. Is this their economic theory at work? Enjoyed the book, highly recommend it, but it would be nice if they lowered their prices.

I gave this a star simply so that I could write this review. It is a terrible book. I read two of these awful books written, it seems, by a committee of economists who should stick to the economy and stay away from 'writing' formulaic mysteries that are nearly incomprehensible.

This quick easy to read mystery is ideal for someone who wants a quick and painless introduction to economic principles. It is easy to see why high school students in an advanced placement class in economics would benefit from it.The Afterword which explains how and why the authors came to write the mystery is probably as interesting as the book.As a character, Henry Spearman needs a bit of fleshing out. His attributes are explained rather than shown. He is more an avatar guide to economic principle rather than a flesh and blood fictional character. Pidge, also, is a bit one demential as the "sidekick." I am enough interested in the character and the device to plan to read other books in the series.

An excellent detective novel with a keen insight into the objective (and remarkably simple) truth of economics that rationalizes rather than vilifies the essence of logic.