About
Reviews
Search
Submit
Home

Mystery Books for Sale

[ Home ]
[ About | Reviews | Search | Submit ]


  

THE SPINNING MAN
by George Harrar
Blue Hen, February 2004
352 pages
$14.00
ISBN: 0425193748


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

Evan Birch is a man looking for a meaningful existence. He has a beautiful wife and twin sons and heads the Department of Philosophy at Pearse College and that is a joke within itself. There are no new students enrolling in the philosophy program at the campus and it is extremely likely that the school's board of directors will decide to pull the plug. Professor Birch might not have made an impact as a teacher, but he will as another type of person -- a criminal suspect.

A high school cheerleader by the name of Joyce Bonner has recently gone missing and the police are on a mission to find her. Witnesses and circumstantial evidence point to the professor who claims that he is innocent.

One day as he was driving back home with his kids, a police car pulls him over. He is handcuffed and taken into custody as his children watch helplessly, not knowing what is going on.

Once Birch learns of the young girl's disappearance he will try to convince the police that he is not responsible. Innocent men are constantly accused of murder, he thinks, why should this be any different? The real question is, which category does he fall under, guilty or innocent?

After reading Agatha Christie's THE MURDER OF ROGER ACKROYD many years ago, I have learned not to trust first-person narrators inside a book, particularly one such as this. Birch is an annoying character who makes too much about the things going on around him. He tends to overanalyze everything and is always looking for a philosophical bent on anything going on with this case. As the title says, the narrator spins tale after tale so that no one knows if he really is involved in the disappearance. He constantly quotes from Wittgenstein, and if you are not familiar with this philosopher you will be after reading this novel.

The secondary characters fare no better in this book as Birch's wife Ellen is also a brainiac and their twin ten-year-olds do not behave as average children. As a reader I was beyond frustrated trying to understand this book. There are some clever twists that may surprise readers, including its ambiguous ending. I am just sorry that my receptiveness to this work was muddled with all of the introspections that the narrator felt he had to do. It got to be too much.

Reviewed by Angel L. Soto, September 2004

[ Top ]


QUICK SEARCH:

 

Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)


[ About | Reviews | Search | Submit ]
[ Home ]