As detectives go, Freddy Carmichael isn’t exactly hard-boiled. Sure, he used to work as a private investigator in New York City, but ever since he moved out of the big smoke and into the sunny Los Angeles guesthouse of a sports-mad couch potato called Pete Lennox, it seems like all cases have revolved around…mathematics problems. Naturally, there is a simple explanation for this: Freddy and Pete are the main characters in LA Math, an ingenious attempt to blend detective fiction with mathematical instruction written by James D Stein, an emeritus professor of mathematics at California State University, Long Beach.

Stein’s hybrid series of tales shows Freddy and his slovenly sidekick Pete using a range of mathematical tricks to solve whatever crimes come their way. A case of suspected embezzlement at the city council is resolved with a discussion of percentages. A potentially nasty dispute between LA’s biggest bookies gets cleared up with a bit of probability theory. The mystery surrounding the book’s lone murder – of an heiress who tries to write her killer’s name in blood before she expires – becomes crystal-clear thanks to Pete’s knowledge of compound interest.

The mathematics involved is fairly light (the book’s title refers to “liberal arts” as well as Los Angeles), and so are the detective stories in it in it; despite the book’s noir-ish cover, there is very little gore or grit here and Stein’s style owes more to Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe tales than to modern crime dramas. Still, the stories are fun and the lengthy mathematical appendices linked with each chapter ensure that you’ll pick up a couple of new tricks.

• 2016 Princeton University Press £18.95/$24.95hb 256pp