All In

The Fibonacci sequence is a recurring motif that represents the killer Beau Donovan’s attempt to impose a perfect, mathematical, and seemingly natural order onto his violent crimes, playing into the theme of The Inevitable Collapse of Ordered Systems of Violence. The discovery of this pattern is the novel’s central turning point, and Sloane’s explanation of the sequence’s prevalence in the natural world reveals Beau’s mindset: “The Fibonacci sequence appears throughout the biological world: the arrangement of pinecones, the family tree of honeybees, nautilus shells, flower petals” (72). By using this formula, Beau reframes his horrific actions as part of an elegant, almost divine design, something he sees as both “beautiful” (1) and a testament to his intellectual superiority. The spiral pattern of the murder locations further cements this, illustrating his grand ambition to create a perfect, geometric form out of the chaos of death.

The motif’s intellectual nature is made brutally physical through the numbers applied to each victim, which also serve to track the killer’s growing brutality. By marking his victims, he transforms them from human beings into mere data points in his grand equation, symbols of his ownership and intellectual dominance, even as his quest for perfection inevitably descends into violent chaos.