The book is about a Catholic Cardinal from the Cleveland diocese who is bent on bribing his way into the conclave of cardinals in Rome. He corrupts the monsignor who works for him and, together, they steal funds from Cleveland’s parishes to finance the cardinal’s illegal goals. Ultimately, when the monsignor is no longer needed, the cardinal kills him. Only at the end of the book do we find out that the cardinal isn’t an ordained priest, but is the real cardinal’s twin brother. The real cardinal had been removed and kept drugged and imprisoned in a nursing home.

The cardinal does get found out at the end of the book and is dealt with by the Vatican Guard.

While the cardinal is the principal protagonist in the book, he is not the main character. That position belongs to Charlie Franklin, an attorney who fancies himself as a “fixer”; a man who, for a price, makes embarrassing information about prominent clients go away. The cardinal hires Charlie to pick up a package for him from a New York antiquities dealer. Charlie suspects that the package contains illegal documents but elects not to query the cardinal to maintain deniability. As the story moves on, the plot incorporates Italian mobsters and an unknown international group that we never get to know the identity of with certainty.

It has been over a year since I’ve read a thriller and, after finishing Robert Allen Stowe’s book, I wondered why I waited so long. I enjoy reading thrillers; especially one that makes me reluctant to close my e-reader for the evening. According to the author’s notes, this is the first thriller that he’s written making my enjoyment of it all the more remarkable. ( )

This book started off with a pretty slow build and felt based on some like weird tropes (I wasn't like upset by skeevy Catholic official, but I was kind of eye-rolling at it,) but it just kept going and by the end things felt pretty wild--tropes were undermined and then twisted around and I don't know that I was necessarily surprised by how things worked out, but it did definitely feel like a real Journey.

It wasn't hugely my thing--sometimes the tone felt like it was Trying So Hard to be "noir," though as an Ohio ex-pat I did appreciate the details of the NE landscape, especially when the characters visited Hudson. But I think if the "noir" aesthetic appeals to you, complete with femme fatale, you might really enjoy this! ( )

I greatly enjoyed the book. The way that the story is told is really captivating and interesting. Once you pick it up it's really hard to put down because you become so invested in the story line. It's not perfect but still worth the time.

I personally liked the way the main characters were written. It was incredibly believable and they did not come across as 'fictional characters' or pull you out of the story (which some badly written characters tend to do). ( )

Excellent entertainment! Extremely lively characters that invite, no: demand! to accompany them on the grotesque ride through this absurd plot.

Here, evil is found in good and good in evil. For a cardinal in Cleveland, of all people, feels the hunger for power. Not only a lawyer, a former reporter or the Mob get caught in the whirlpool of his confused ambitions.

I, for one, could not put this book down for two days.

Five stars. Period. ( )

I received a copy of ‘The Third Pitch’ as an ebook through the Early Reviewers Program.

I found it easy enough to read, and within the structure of a thriller, I could pretty much follow what was going on. But I wouldn’t say I thoroughly enjoyed it; there were a few things that irritated me about this story.

In a nutshell, with no spoilers, Charlie, a Cleveland lawyer who has a reputation as a “fixer” for the indiscretions of those who don’t want their problems made public, is approached to act as an intermediary for the newly-appointed Cardinal Maroney who wants an item moved secretively. It turns out that there are others also interested in the transaction, and that’s when it all gets complex and the story really starts.

What I don’t understand, and this plot error irked from early on, is why the cardinal had Charlie in his sights after the first two deliveries. It should have been clear, even to the cardinal, that Charlie was simply delivering the item, not supplying it, or even aware of its contents. And yet, the distrust becomes a major plot line.

Apart from that, some of the minor characters are so one-dimensional in the way they are presented in the story: the local Italian gangsters and the Boston boys - I understand why the locals were in the story, but the way they were written was just too cliched. (By the way, I could have told Rocco not to go fishing - it wasn’t that hard to guess what was coming). I don’t even know why the Boston connection was used, and they were written as either idiots or as bumbling cartoon criminals. In my opinion, it rarely works when authors try to write a character’s accent as part of their speech, especially if it is using a stereotype.

This is Stowe’s first novel. He knows how to tell a story, and how to bring in a range of characters. He needs some editorial advice on character and plot development. I’m not entirely sure that some of the details of cardinal eligibility for conclave were correct. The “Dan Brown” treatment of the Catholic Church (not exactly incorrect, but certainly outside of accepted practice) was used to drive the plot in a couple of instances. ( )