Contracts for Sale by Edward Izzi

A brilliant burst of crime fiction, Contracts for Sale by Edward Izzi is the latest of this author’s tension-dripping thrillers – a dark and gritty story of assassins for hire that is at once far-fetched and brutally realistic.

A hard-nosed journalist with an inside line to the Chicago PD, Paul Crawford is the mystery-unfurling investigator at the heart of this urban drama. It doesn’t take long to realize that solving a recent string of perfect murders is beyond the average detective’s pay grade, while Crawford’s sleuthing skills bring him to the deadly mix from a different angle. As he fills in the missing pieces, more bodies start dropping closer to home, exposing a wealthy cadre of killers and cutthroat investors.

Though the premise of an assassination corporation may be hard for some to believe, the tangles of this shadowy plot are well-crafted and ceaselessly entertaining – if readers are willing to suspend their disbelief a bit. With a pace and tone that feels like a grimly realistic depiction of the Chicago streets, there is a powerful sense of authenticity to each character, their emotional reactions, and the richly narrated scenes, despite any potential believability in the story.

There are scattered bits of sloppy dialogue or repetitive exposition, but the novel is undeniably one of the author’s strongest to date, which will hit the mark for fans of dark crime fiction.

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