With a sinister plot that viciously grabs readers from the start, Contracts for Sale by Edward Izzi is a compellingly dark slice of modern noir. Tapping into old-school crime fiction, but tinged with the remains of a post-Covid world, this is a timely and tense ride.
Paul Crawford is a grizzled journalist who is desperate for a good story, anything to save him from the boring grind of inventing news every day. When he dives into a lead about a missing CEO named John Monahan, he has no idea how deep and dangerous the waters are about to become.
Over the past 7 years, dozens of other businessmen have disappeared in unsolved cases, and the street-wise sleuth smells a pattern. In the underbelly of the Windy City, a macabre organization has quietly gained power by eliminating their clients’ enemies for a healthy fee. Masquerading as a waste services company, this profit-making machine is very good at what it does, but there is a struggle for power at the top of Eradication Inc., and more bodies start dropping in an apparent white-collar coup.
Assassins for hire is hardly a new idea in fiction, but the setting of corporate America makes the story shine, as it doesn’t seem entirely far-fetched to imagine that billion-dollar industries would embark on truly dark power struggles. Readers will recognize the victims in this story from Forbes headlines and CEO tweets, and Izzi patiently introduces readers to the players, slowly unraveling this character-driven drama, rather than relying on a constant stream of action and murder.
However, some of the logistical details of Eradication Inc. are less fine-tuned – for instance, a buy-in price for shareholders at only one million dollars, or the affordable price of $99K to pull off the perfect murder. While this story feels like a police drama, with all the procedure and lead-chasing of a murder investigation, there is also an over-the-top element of conspiracy that pushes the plot a bit too far from reality. Additionally, the reliance on familiar mafia tropes – black ski masks, black SUVs, decapitations, dissolving bodies in acid – feels more like cookie-cutter villainy than truly menacing.
The author also has a tendency to over-explain certain scenes, particularly when it comes to locations, directions, and landmarks. Chicago is a rich landscape for a thriller, but certain expositional elements could be trimmed to keep the pace steady. This also carries over into explanations of character motivations, such as the extensive narration of Fortuna’s scheme to eliminate Monahan early in the book. Some scenes read like a Bond villain unnecessarily dictating the entirety of their dastardly plot, and readers must be trusted to read between the lines. There are also some formatting and grammatical mistakes, and misspelled slang terms (i.e., “Sarg” vs. “Sarge”, “waved” vs. “waived”), all of which affect the flow and authority of the read.
That said, while there are some issues with execution and writing quality, this wild crime thriller is gritty and imaginative with more than a few twists to keep the reader guessing.
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