Rating: 
Summary: a book to discuss
Review: I'm not one to include a review of the plot: that's what the book review/back cover is for. I found the first 30-some pages unengaging. The next sections of the book seemed to focus mostly on the professor's inner world which I found engaging in a disturbing way. A view into his inner world sets up the plot itself and the big question "did he or didn't he?" which remains unanswered in the end. I wouldn't say the book is a page turning high suspense novel as I had hoped. However, it is unique and it did leave me wishing that a friend had read it simultaneously so that we could discuss it. If a book provokes any kind of debate, I find it's a productive read.
Rating: 
Summary: powerful criminal investigation tale
Review: Professor Evan Birch is the chairman of the Philosophy Department at Pear College, an area of study that has very little student enrollment. He's happily married to his wife Ellen who works at the Institute for Private studies. They have identical twin ten-year-old boys Adam and Zed who give them very little trouble. They could be the role model of the idyllic American family until Detective Robert Malloy questions Evan concerning the disappearance of a sixteen year old girl.Joyce Bonner was last seen on August 23 in the information booth at a local party where she worked. An eyewitness reports that a gray car with a license plate starting with EZ was seen there with a man inside. Evan admits he was there, but insisting he was only formulating lessons for his class. The police doubt his statement and they repeatedly question him. Soon his friends, faculty members and family believe where there's smoke there's fire and question his innocence. Whatever the police finally determine, Evan realizes the stigma will always remain with him because people have long memories of the negative. Taken from the headlines, the protagonist's guilt or innocence in the disappearance of the teenager is almost irrelevant because the media, his family and his co-workers have already convicted him whether he is innocent or not. Mindful of the rush to judgment to unfairly hang Richard Jewel a hero at the Atlanta Olympics, and apparently the current Anthrax investigation of Dr. Steven Hatfill, THE SPINNING MAN shows how lives can be ripped apart just by being a suspect in a criminal investigation. Harriet Klausner
Rating: 
Summary: Top notch creation - A delight to read !
Review: Real name: Reynolds Potter (Haslett, Michigan)
The Spinning Man is an intriguing mystery that kept me completely engaged from start to finish. Both the Wall Street Journal and the Boston Globe's former mystery reviewer gave "thumbs up" praise to this clever, thoughtful, inventive novel. Their reviews are spot on. This anything-but-ordinary book will keep you thinking about it long after you've finished. Some savvy director will make a winning movie from this book. Have fun casting it after you've enjoyed it!
Rating:
Summary: Incandescent
Review: 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 balanced
just on the edge of intimacy and distance. A book to be savored on several levels.
Rating: 
Summary: A Letdown
Review: The book just wasn't a thriller in any sense of the word. I was unimpressed and was hoping for a thrill at the end and it just fizzled out.
Rating:
Summary: Good mystery - excellent narrative
Review: The mystery? 50-year old philosophy professor may or may not have murdered a teenager -- a high school cheerleader. If he didn't, why does so much minor evidence, added up, all point to him? He has her lipstick in his car (he gave a ride to a group of kids earlier in the summer), he was spotted near where she works, etc, etc. That is all interesting, well presented. But what really makes this story so good is the interior monolog that he keeps going. And his conversation with his wife. His concern about language/philosophy -- exactness in an era of inexact living. This is a well written book. I recommend it.
Rating:
Summary: compelling and original
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: When the mind's echoes don't fade out...
Review: This book greatly disturbed me. Not because it isn't well-written (it is). Not because the characters didn't come alive in my head (they did). Not because the outcome was predictable (it wasn't). It disturbed me because it forced me to THINK about what I had read, when what I was expecting was a "once it's over, it's neat and all ends are tied up and you can go on to the next book on the shelf." It's a story that begs to be discussed with other readers, that has no one correct POV, that is like looking into parallel mirrors and seeing infinite reflections. The lead character is both engaging and frustrating (I confess to some of the same tendancies to call people on the meaning of their words). He does smart and dumb things. Mostly, though, he sees the world through eyes as naive as a child or as deliberate as the most hardened criminal. YOU have to decide. Don't expect to just walk away from this book - and that is my way of saying it's extraordinarily thought-provoking. Is the inkblot image that of a chalice, or two profiles? Whichever you decide, you will not be disappointed.
Rating:
Summary: When the mind's echoes don't fade out...
Review: This book greatly disturbed me. Not because it isn't well-written (it is). Not because the characters didn't come alive in my head (they did). Not because the outcome was predictable (it wasn't). It disturbed me because it forced me to THINK about what I had read, when what I was expecting was a "once it's over, it's neat and all ends are tied up and you can go on to the next book on the shelf." It's a story that begs to be discussed with other readers, that has no one correct POV, that is like looking into parallel mirrors and seeing infinite reflections. The lead character is both engaging and frustrating (I confess to some of the same tendancies to call people on the meaning of their words). He does smart and dumb things. Mostly, though, he sees the world through eyes as naive as a child or as deliberate as the most hardened criminal. YOU have to decide. Don't expect to just walk away from this book - and that is my way of saying it's extraordinarily thought-provoking. Is the inkblot image that of a chalice, or two profiles? Whichever you decide, you will not be disappointed.
Rating:
Summary: A mystery of changing philosophy
Review: This extraordinary mystery by George Harrar goes above and beyond the call of the usual whodunit. Harrar's protagonist, Evan Birch, is a largely unlikeable character who is the only philosophy professor left at his university. Although a devoted family man and someone preoccupied with distributing his own book on a German philosopher, Birch finds himself suddenly suspected of kidnapping a teenager girl. Memory becomes confusing. Odd images surface. Lectures become questions into the what Evan really believes about life. In perhaps the most telling of Harrar's scenes, the professor is forced to teach a "Philosophy of Time" class that no one in physics wants to teach. Completely adrift, he rambles on about time in a Newtonian way, completely ignorant of the new discoveries of quantum physics. Trapped in a linear way of thinking, Evan can't find his way out of his own predicament until he lets dreams, intuition and difffernet views of the past begin to surface, shedding new light on the crime. Along the way, the reader begins to sympathize with his plight, although Birch always remains a man who's spinning in a reality he can't understand. An excellent novel.
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