I'm a long retired middling---and a tad muddling, alas---mathematician from a university very like the one featured in my novel. Prior to this, my writing experience consisted of translating (mostly from Russian) a dozen or so mathematics-oriented books (published under my real name). My novel is, I gather, a "roman a clef": like my protagonist I grew up in Australia and came to Canada in my late twenties, and, again like him, some years ago became infuriated at the shenanigans of the present Russian president, whom, on the advice of my Russian-Georgian-Jewish wife, I have renamed "Padlov," which, she assures me, is cognate with the Russian word for "offal." My frustration, especially at the return of the nuclear threat, served to motivate me to write a thriller about someone nursing a (tentative) desire to assassinate Padlov, but as this theme tended to occupy too few pages, I filled out the story with stretches from the would-be assassin's life in Australia and Canada, as well as a period of ten months in the USSR in 1966-67, all comprising the "clef" portion of the novel. Some of the mathematical or philosophical allusions might nevertheless appeal to anyone with interests in that direction. Some might find the description of life in postwar Gatton, the little town in southeast Queensland were I grew up, diverting. The hero's experience of Moscow in Soviet times might also be of interest, as that of a mad exotic world consigned to the dustbin of history, one hopes. And his voyeurism and general preoccupation with sex may amuse---or repel. Note that the cover, front and back, depicts the twelve pentominoes, which play a small supporting role in the narrative.
I feel that the "thriller" portion of the novel might very well serve as the plot of a wry screen thriller, with someone like Bill Nighy playing the old prof.
It might be objected that a film about an assassination, albeit tentative, of a presiding Russian president, would constitute a rather radical violation of international political etiquette. In response, one might remind such an hypothetical objector that the present Russian prez tipped the scales in favour of Trump's election and Brexit---not to mention a great many other heinous misdeeds which can be laid to him, several of which are itemized in my novel. He's brazen, so why can't we be? But of course the actual identity of the putative victim of said assassination could be disguised to some extent in order to mollify the politically tender-hearted.

“a peculiar but beguiling mixture of the quotidian and the comically fantastical The protagonist comes off as an engagingly quirky character---a deeply cerebral man At its best, the novel is a thoughtful, often funny, exploration of the allure of political anger.”
– Kirkus Reviews