Speculation Blog Tour & Giveaway

You've reached the next stop on Novel Publicity's
blog tour for
Edmund Jorgensen's  thought-provoking debut novel SPECULATION

      

Title:  Speculation

Author: Edmund Jorgensen

Published:  2011 by Inkwell & Often

Recognized:  Debut Novel

Pages:  264

Source:  Novel Publicity
Genre:  Mystery

Favorite Quotes:

She looked up at me.  Blinking with indignity that I had interrupted her adolescent pastoral. 'What?' 'That daisy has 34 petals.  That means you'll end on 'He loves me not.' I had not planned what I was going to say.  My heart was beating very fast and I did not feel in control of my speech.  'I would have pulled one off before I gave the flower to you, and then counted just to be sure.'

Perhaps he felt clearly that he would have to find some prick or itch against the comforts he knew he had not earned, and how difficult it might prove to find his way out of his father's large and not entirely honest shadow.

Entropy tends to increase in a system.  Disorder grows with the passage of time.  

Clock is ticking...You know how much I have always loved puzzles.  The harder the better.  Philosophical conundrums.  Logical teasers.  Mathematical mindbenders.  This love has been with me since childhood.  I can even remember my first experience of the puzzle.  The first time I felt an artifact from another consciousness in direct opposition to my own understanding.

Usually I am almost constitutionally averse to conflict, and prefer to effect change with long siege campaigns of persuasion and cajoling.  But I felt unusually confident and self-possessed that night I arrived home determined to pull my wife up from the black hole into which she had fallen. 

Like Khrushchev banging his shoe on the table in session at the U.N.

At times his eyes could appear so blue and detached that they seemed floating, holograhic, a projection from the dream-logic apparatus humming away in his skull.

The way Featherstone had lived his last days it was impossible to be too sad. Death waits for all of us--as everyone who has not just had someone die is quick to remind us--and Featherstone's death seemed to be what death almost never is: not a decline or an interruption but a culmination.

I took a closer look at the three cups: a scarlet dragon was painted on the inside of each one.  Each dragon made unique coils with his body and the smoke from his nostrils, and displayed a different unclassifiable emotion with his smiling mouth and eyes.

Origin, destiny, or will--which is the primary force in man's life?

None of it got under my skin until they showed me the library.  Then my knees went weak.  I mean that literally--I had to sit down...there were folios of Shakespeare in those glass-cased shelves, and first editions signed by Frost and Yeats, and, with a prominent glass case all to itself, an original Latin edition of Descartes' Meditations on First Philosophy.

Description from Goodreads:

Andrew Wrangles has a decision to make. His best friend Sothum, a philosophical and financial genius, has just died and left him a choice in his will: ten million dollars or a sealed envelope.

Andrew's wife Cheryl doesn't see this as much of a choice. She wants Andrew to take the money, and what little patience she has for his speculating about what could be worth more than ten million dollars is wearing thin very quickly.

But as Andrew digs deeper into the secret life that Sothum lived, he finds more questions than answers. Does the envelope contain the fate of a vanished mutual friend? The answer to a terrible cosmic riddle? The confession to a crime? Is Sothum just playing a final private joke? Or has Andrew become a pawn in a game--a game that Sothum died playing against a bigger opponent than Andrew can imagine?

I truly enjoyed this book and gave it a 4-star rating, not because it was an easy beach read, but due to the fact that it is well-written, entertaining, and thought-provoking.  The story is deeply woven with philosphical thought and reasoning as it pertains to complicated characters involved in a layered mystery.  What would you do if you were Andrew?

Novel Publicity Blog Tour Notes: Wanna win a $50 gift card or an autographed copy of Speculation? Well, there are two ways to enter...

1. Leave a comment on my blog. One random commenter during this tour will win a $50 gift card. For the full list of participating blogs, visit the official Speculation tour page.
2. Enter the Rafflecopter contest! I've posted the contest form below, or you can enter on the tour page linked above.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

About the author:

Edmund Jorgensen was born in Chicago. He studied classical languages and has maintained a love for all things Greek and Roman. He fell in love with his wife in Mexico; they now reside, happily but considerably more chilly, in Watertown, Massachusetts. Edmund is currently hard at work on his second book, a set of interconnected short stories. Connect with Edmund on his website, Facebook, Twitter or GoodReads.

Get Speculation on Amazon or Barnes & Noble.