The Rizzoli Contract – Kevin Stevens
I came away asking the following question: to what extent is this book actually a thriller?
It is marketed as a thriller, which might be doing it a bit of a disservice. It makes very good use of an unusual central character – a publisher as opposed to your run-of-the-mill investigator, journalist or lawyer.
At first I thought that it wasn’t really a thriller at all – that the eponymous book contract was a maguffin and that the story was really about the central character and his struggle to get control of his life again.
But then I decided that this is the case in most thrillers. The characters have an entry point which takes the story so far along its arc. Then it generally goes completely out of control and they are left fighting for survival. This is, in fact, your standard thriller plot, and The Rizzoli Contract does really follow this pattern.
I did feel that, as many readers have said, it did somehow lack the killer punch. This is true, but perhaps does not fully allow for the emotional impact of the final plot twist, a betrayal that is pretty big by anyone’s standards.
It is a good book, and worth reading, especially if you go into it expecting a hybrid of thriller and straight novel rather than your usual doorstopping blockbuster – it’s not even all that thick.