The Contest, by Jeff Macfee
26 Feb 2025The Book
Synopsis:
In this cozy crime novel, a previous puzzle prodigy returns to the competing world. A thoughtful, low-stakes mystery, perfect for fans of The Queen's Gambit.
Once a child prodigy of puzzles and logic games, Gillian Charles now barely ekes out a living in Los Angeles. With her sick mother facing eviction from her care facility, Gillian can't say no when her childhood nemesis, Tommy, shows up at her apartment with a $50k offer. All she has to do is return to the place where it all started, where she swore she'd never set foot Miscellany.
Miscellany is a place of wonder and enchantment—a Disney World for puzzle lovers, and one that quickly owns the lives of those who stay too long. Tommy is running the park's latest big game, and he's convinced someone is leaking the answers. With investment and expansion in the cards, Miscellany can’t afford a scandal. As a former puzzler who kept her distance from Miscellany for twenty years, Gillian should find it easy to investigate while avoiding Miscellany’s charms and entanglements.
But when Gillian arrives, she discovers things aren't so straightforward. Her turncoat ex-friend Martin Ellsberg holds the security reins, Tommy’s estranged wife Evelina spins PR webs around the park’s machinations, and the manipulative park founder Sebastian offers her the financial security and intellectual future she always wanted. With her mother’s circumstances growing more dire, and under pressure to sweep the accusations under the rug, Gillian finds childhood games all the more treacherous for adults.
Miscellany is offering Gillian the life she always wanted. But at what price?
My Review
The Contest is an intriguing thriller novel, written by Jeff Macfee, and published by Datura Books. An original premise that plays with a well-constructed worldbuilding, a wild competition with which our main character, Gillian, has a shared past that she tried to flee from.
As a child, Gillian competed in the Contest, but after losing, she walked away from that world; now, she hustles with several side gigs to keep supporting her chronically ill mother. When the winner of the first Contest comes into her life, asking her to investigate possible cheating, despite she wanted to keep all of this far from her, the money offered is too good to let it pass. But returning to the world of Miscellany also means Gillian having to confront her past and how the Contest marked her life.
We have an excellent character in Gillian's figure: not only that young genius whose esteem was put in being the very best, seeking the approbation from Sebastian (Miscellany's director), but how she's now pressured by her family and how she owes so much to her mother. Returning to Miscellany means entering again to that world she was trying to avoid; and immediately we see how she's sucked towards the young Gillian, but this time, with more at the stake. Macfee fleshed her perfectly, giving us an excellent main character, but the rest of the cast is equally memorable.
The winner, Tom, is equally interesting as Gillian; while on the surface he has a successful life, we can see how he hides darker aspects of his life. The other two OG kids are equally touched by the Contest, becoming part of Sebastian's company; but Sebastian has his own light. He's not only brilliant, but also has that quality that makes people want to please him, but we can also see him being vulnerable, human, taking him far from that Willy Wonka image he wove around himself.
The worldbuilding is quite intriguing, with this company that works on creating puzzles to stimulate curiosity, and how the Contest was the pinnacle of it: a sort of Hunger Games trials that was all or nothing for our characters, challenging not only their intelligence but also their ambition (and we can see it perfectly on the prologue). A setting that plays the best to introduce the crime element. The pacing is well-balanced, relatively fast, but it suits well into our story, mixing slower moments that allow us to know more about the characters with tenser scenes.
The Contest is an excellent thriller, quite a cozy crime novel that keeps you hooked until the very last page; if you want to read something unique and really immersive, you should give Jeff Macfee a try!
