The Spinning Man

Have you noticed anything strange in reading the customer reviews of this book? If you haven't, I'll tell you: readers either loved it or hated it; there seems to be no middle ground. What's going on? What is it about this novel that has left readers either wildly raving or perfunctorily dismissive? Since I'm in the former camp -- I even read it twice -- when I saw some of the negative reviews, I was astonished, then perplexed: those readers seemed to have missed the point of this book entirely. Why? I think it must be because the publisher and some of the editorial reviews have billed it as a traditional suspense-thriller. It ain't that at all, even though it's a real page-turner. It's much more sophisticated, subtle, and true-to-life than a typical thriller. The author has very convincingly imagined what it would be like if your life -- through an event that came out of the blue and was (perhaps) not of your making -- suddenly began to unravel. (I say "perhaps" because you as the reader aren't sure whether the protagonist, a philosophy professor at a small college, is actually guilty of the horrendous crime he's accused of or not.) Overnight you become an object of suspicion, not only to the police but to your colleagues, your friends, and eventually even your closest family members. Evan Birch, the professor, even begins to doubt his own memory, and begins to see the playful sophistry he has always relied on in his classes and his daily life as a detriment to proving his professed innocence. This is a thinker's suspense novel that goes down as easily as Hemingway and keeps you hanging right to the end. There's never a false note. Parts are laugh-out-loud funny, and the author has a keen eye for life's little absurdities. All this makes for a very enjoyable read. Try it!

The Spinning Man is a novel that defies easy categorization. At the surface, it appears to be a murder mystery in the whodunit tradition. It's actually a character-driven portrait of a family dealing with a crisis. The people in the novel are multi-dimensional and realistic. We can identify with their plight and are quickly drawn into the story. The title character is a college professor who, through a series of circumstances, becomes a suspect in the disappearance of a young girl. The detective assigned to solve the girl's disappearance is finely written. His interaction with the suspect is the backbone of the novel, and we look forward to their meetings-as does the professor. Despite the philisophical ideaologies expressed in the book, the plot never seems bogged down or overly abstract. The complexities of guilt and innocence, as well as blame and redemption within the confines of personal relationships are explored by the author. In the end we are left to draw our own conclusions, which proves to be a satisfying assignment.

Seamlessly orchestrated suspense. "The Spinning Man" is written in a lovely, elegant style. Intensely compelling psychological drama. Depictions of the protagonist's work and family situations are witty and memorable. The minimal interaction between husband and wife seems constantly balancedjust on the edge of intimacy and distance. A book to be savored on several levels.

As a professor of philosophy, I fully expected this book to be implausible in its philosophical aspects. What a pleasant surprise, therefore, to find that the author shows not only philosophical sophistication but also the ability to make his academic setting realistic and even funny at times. The continual analysis by his protagonist Evan Birch of the other characters' language and thoughts is both clever and integral to Birch's personality. For all its erudition, this book is never boring, difficult, or pedantic -- on the contrary, it is gripping, dramatic, and at times explosive. This is a brilliant work that stands head and shoulders above the normal "crime" novel, and in many ways it reminds me of Robert Clark's superb Mr. White's Confession, which won the Edgar Award for best first mystery. If there's any justice, this book will be a winner too. Don't miss it.

Early on in this terrific new novel, protagonist Evan Birch relates a joke in which, after divine intervention seems to spare two men from execution, the third - a philosopher - can't stop himself from pointing out that he thinks he "sees the problem" with the malfunctioning guillotine. Similarly, when Evan is accused of an awful crime, his every response to the mounting pile of circumstantial coincidences seems to raise doubt about his innocence. A philosophy professor, he can't seem to answer a seemingly straightforwad question without splitting hairs, dissecting his interrogator's language, straining for absolute accuracy in his every reply. This he does out of a committment to the "truth" in all its complexity and mystery. Or is that the reason?This is the kind of thrilling, intelligent book that erases the line between literary and popular fiction. Entertaining, provocative and suspensful, it is satisfying on many levels, and doesn't take a misstep from beginning to end.