“Jacob Finch Bonner, the once promising author of the ‘New & Noteworthy’ (The New York Times Book Review) novel The Invention of Wonder, let himself into the office he’d been assigned on the second floor of Richard Peng Hall, set his beat-up leather satchel on the barren desk, and looked around in something akin to despair.”

From Jean Hanff Korelitz’s The Plot.

Despite his first book being critically-acclaimed, author Jake Bonner quickly fell into literary obscurity. After his following novels were rejected, Jake has found himself stuck teaching a writing program at Ripley College, a small college in the middle of nowhere. Jake is less-than-thrilled with his latest batch of students, especially the pretentious Evan Parker. Stuck in a standstill as a professor, Jake finally convinces Evan to share a brief summary of Evan’s “guaranteed-to-be-successful” plot with him so he can offer some minor suggestions. After hearing the plot, Jake realizes that Evan’s story will be a huge hit once it’s published, but when several years go by and Jake has yet to hear of Evan’s success, he looks into the reason why. Jake quickly learns that Evan died shortly after leaving the program and that he never published his story. Unable to let the perfect plot never be published, Jake decides to use the idea to write a novel of his own. Soon Jake’s Crib is a huge success all over the world and bringing countless good things to his life, even allowing Jake to meet his wife, Anna, on the book tour. However, when Jake receives an anonymous email that says he’s a thief, his life quickly spirals out of control as he searches for whoever knows the truth of where he got his story.

Despite the interesting story and thrilling developments, the first third of the book is so bogged down with setting and background information, that the story becomes a tedious read, to say the least. If readers make it through the first portion of the book, the reader will be rewarded with an edge-of-the-seat thriller that is nearly impossible to put down. Overall, Korelitz manages to create a fast-paced thriller in The Plot that will be impossible to forget.