With the post-mortem on how and why Jed Rubenfeld's much-hyped debut novel THE INTERPRETATION OF MURDER didn't meet its expectations now a few weeks old, it's time for the spin to take over. But since Bookscan reported a 47 percent jump in sales the week the Wall Street Journal article ran - showing that yet again, all publicity is good publicity - maybe there's something to the AP running its profile of the Yale-based constitutional law professor now, and not beforehand.

And Rubenfeld does give some clue to his future, in that he's not sure if he'll write a second novel. He wrote the first draft of "The Interpetation of Murder" in six months because the history and ideas moved him. "This book, this was my way of not doing law," he says. "I still don't think I'm really a novelist. ... I think that I was able to write this book because it didn't require someone who was really a novelist." Then again, maybe it's spin moving against the grain...