this was a lot of fun to read, the characters were great and I loved the satirical element of the book. I think it really worked as a mystery.

Three were many things I liked about this book. The writing was excellent. I liked how Jenkins has a very wide-ranging mind and connects many different things together in a way that reminds me of Umberto Eco. Ultimately, even though I liked it I wasn't satisfied with the book's ambiguous ending.

Readers should be very familiar with chess and chess problems because my lack of knowledge in these areas was a hindrance.

Spurious Games offers an interesting, unexpected read. The author is writing on a number of levels, satirical, historical, plot-driven mystery, social commentary. This is something I rarely say, but—I am absolutely sure I didn't get as much as I might have out of this title. I was engaged by the central narrative, but could tell that I was missing asides and references to topics I'm not familiar with.

In all, this title is an engaging, but frustrating read.

I felt the story was amusing, especially with the uncommon names and terms such as Professor of Psychology and Plagiarism, Professor of Money Laundering, Julian Assange Solutions, Chubby Checker and etc. The novel was written with an unusual choice of words, or maybe my limited vocabulary is unable to catch up with the author's high-level vocabulary. Nevertheless, I can sense the author is an extremely knowledgeable person who has extensive knowledge in various fields. I might not understand some of the histories mentioned in this book, somehow, I quite admire the author's brilliance and his expertise in chess.

To be honest, I almost want to give up this book until it reaches the probability theory and Nash Equilibrium, which is something that I learned when I was in university. I wasn't really good at that subject, but at least it helps me a bit to understand the story. The storyline is quite refreshing, using chess games to analyse the murder case and to find out the next possible murder victim. Leaving the chess and other irrelevant philosophical content aside, the case itself is very intriguing. And the characters are hilarious or colourful respectively.