2 of 2 copies available
When the students in Winchester University's Logic and Reasoning 204 arrive for their first day of class, they are greeted not with a syllabus or texts, but with a startling assignment from Professor Williams: Find a hypothetical missing girl named Polly. If after being given a series of clues and details the class has not found her before the end of the term in six weeks, she will be murdered.
At first the students are as intrigued by the premise of their puzzle as they are wary of the strange and slightly creepy Professor Williams. But as they delve deeper into the mystery, they begin to wonder: Is the Polly story simply a logic exercise, designed to teach them rational thinking skills, or could it be something more sinister and dangerous?
The mystery soon takes over the lives of three students as they find disturbing connections between Polly and themselves. Characters that were supposedly fictitious begin to emerge in reality. Soon, the boundary between the classroom assignment and the real world becomes blurred–and the students wonder if it is their own lives they are being asked to save.
From the Compact Disc edition.
-
Creators
-
Publisher
-
Release date
February 19, 2008 -
Formats
-
OverDrive Listen audiobook
- ISBN: 9781415946466
- File size: 241774 KB
- Duration: 08:23:41
-
-
Languages
- English
-
Reviews
-
The assignment Professor Williams gives his students in his Logic and Reasoning course is like no other they have ever experienced in college. They're to use logic to find a hypothetical girl, "Polly," who has been abducted and will be murdered by the end of the semester if they fail to save her. This mystery begins to obsess three students, in particular, and before long the lines between fiction and reality begin to blur. Ted Barker provides the perfect fit between narrator and story. The characters come to life with all the personal baggage they bring to their assignment. Barker captures listeners from the first and never lets go. S.S.R. (c) AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine -
December 24, 2007
A complex conspiracy involving the writing of a book drives Lavender’s compelling debut, a thriller that will strike some as a mix of John Fowles’s The Magus
and Stephen King’s The Shining
. At Indiana’s Winchester University, three students—Brian House, Dennis Flaherty and Mary Butler—are taking Logic and Reasoning 204, taught by enigmatic Professor Williams. They quickly learn this is a course like no other. Their single assignment is to find a missing 18-year-old girl, Polly, in six weeks time—or else, Williams asserts, she will be murdered. Is this merely an academic exercise? As Williams produces clues, including photographs of Polly and her associates, the students begin to wonder where homework ends and actual homicide begins. Together with Brian and Dennis, Mary ventures off campus in search of Polly into a world of crumbling towns, decrepit trailers and hints at crimes old and new. A rapid-fire plot offsets thin characterization, though the conspiracy becomes so all-encompassing, so elaborate, that readers may feel a bit like Mary when baffled by her quest: “This is what she felt like: led, played, not in control of anything she did.”
-