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The Pledge
Simsbury College lacrosse star Mark Jessey looks on the members of the Sigma fraternity as his only true family. But when a Sigma freshman turns up dead, Mark is forced to question his deepest loyalties.
736 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published January 1, 1999
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 46 reviews
January 3, 2023
This falls into the same catagory as Missing Pieces from last year. Given to me for free, I figured what the heck, especially since this author literally only wrote the one book (in English).
The overarching plot had promise, and I was definitely in for a secret-society whodunit.
The main problem was the unlikability of a lot of the characters. By about 200 pages in I hadn't developed any meaningful, positive feelings for the heroes, and it's heavily implied that our protagonist did, in-fact almost rape a person.
That pre-disposed me to dislike him, and not want to spend another 500 pages following him through these events.
The straw that broke the camel's back though was a 2.5 page passage about 200ish pages in where you experience a brutal domestic assault from the perspective of the victim. I read to escape from the horrors of the real-world, and this was expertly done in a way that made me incredibly uncomfortable. This was something that people go through every day, and it's horrible.
Once that happened, I needed to skim, because
After skimming, I decided not to finish. Add 1 star to my review if you're the kind of person who likes to read things that strike close to home / parallel some of the darker things in our real world. Add another if you're the kind of person who, at the end of the road, can stomach an ending where everything you read before is rendered largely pointless.
The overarching plot had promise, and I was definitely in for a secret-society whodunit.
The main problem was the unlikability of a lot of the characters. By about 200 pages in I hadn't developed any meaningful, positive feelings for the heroes, and it's heavily implied that our protagonist did, in-fact almost rape a person.
That pre-disposed me to dislike him, and not want to spend another 500 pages following him through these events.
The straw that broke the camel's back though was a 2.5 page passage about 200ish pages in where you experience a brutal domestic assault from the perspective of the victim. I read to escape from the horrors of the real-world, and this was expertly done in a way that made me incredibly uncomfortable. This was something that people go through every day, and it's horrible.
Once that happened, I needed to skim, because
After skimming, I decided not to finish. Add 1 star to my review if you're the kind of person who likes to read things that strike close to home / parallel some of the darker things in our real world. Add another if you're the kind of person who, at the end of the road, can stomach an ending where everything you read before is rendered largely pointless.
July 15, 2018
This was a good first novel. It took a little while for me to get into but once I did I couldn't put it down. The characters could have been more developed, but the writing was well done, and creative. The plot was evenly paced and the ending dragged a little. I was surprised that a student told a Dean of schools to "kiss it" with mild repercussions but it is fiction after all. My only issue is that the reader doesn't find out exactly who killed Chad Ewing.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
April 1, 2020
I totally enjoyed this book. The author is incredibly good at descriptive language that makes every scene vivid without overwhelming the reader with excess words. The author captures campus life like he is sitting there watching it unfold. The realism of his detail makes this special. Even better, within all this vivid detail is a full speed thriller that made it a fast, delightful read.
March 21, 2011
This book was really really good, disappointed that he didn't write anymore.
July 10, 2023
That sure was a lot of pretentious names of very terrible men to keep straight. Hard pass.
November 21, 2013
A surprisingly strong debut. A thriller, as well as a political metaphor. The author clearly knew what he wanted to say about society. A bit childish and corny when depicting love scenes, and the protagonists are too perfect, but that's all forgivable for the moral passion of the book, tasteful irony and sarcasm in depicting mean yet recognizable types, and strong story structure. The writer left this reader wanting more - but where is he now? Such talent simply could not stop writing. Probably has published, or working on, a new book, but under a pen name. It would be great to see this writer's - all grown up and matured since the 1990s - new suspenseful and insightful books and thoughts on the changing social world and what one good and stoic hero can or cannot do.
April 3, 2009
OMG!-I totally forgot that I read this one-thanks for the reminder Scott.
February 23, 2019
Best book I’ve read in a long time. Couldn’t put it down.
November 2, 2020
This book delivered the schlocky drama I was looking for, but it's worth pointing out that it's aged very poorly. In fact, I'm hesitant to call it aging because I don't remember 1999 being this full of casual sexism, abelism, and homophobia, but since I don't think the author was trying to be any of those things, I'll give him the benefit of the doubt that it was the times. Still. I almost stopped reading when the doctor was musing about the injured college student he was treating.
This book is goofy but you know it's gonna be, so that was fine. Aside from the -isms I mentioned, the other big negative for me was all the rhyming chants from the brothers. I've never been in a murderous frat myself but taking the time to write so much poetry to chant under very specific circumstances strikes me as something such people wouldn't be that into. Plus, the alcohol makes it hard to remember and recite so many rhymes.
This book is goofy but you know it's gonna be, so that was fine. Aside from the -isms I mentioned, the other big negative for me was all the rhyming chants from the brothers. I've never been in a murderous frat myself but taking the time to write so much poetry to chant under very specific circumstances strikes me as something such people wouldn't be that into. Plus, the alcohol makes it hard to remember and recite so many rhymes.
November 14, 2018
I found this book quite interesting, as it's not the typical book I tend to read. The characters seem so real that I often wondered if the author used some of his college classmates as guides. This was a great read and left me wanting a bit more at the end. It was tough to put this book down.
October 13, 2021
3.5 stars. Randomly picked up this beat-up, concave spined paperback on a whim at a used bookstore while on vacation. Surprisingly entertaining, if highly implausible. Better character development than many thrillers, decent writing. Kept the pages turning (all 700+).
August 20, 2022
I found this book a bit over the top, with students driving cars, having dogs in their college accommodation, having sex all the time, etc. It just seemed a bit unreal to me!
On the other hand, I found the way the web of the fraternities was portrayed quite well-done.
On the other hand, I found the way the web of the fraternities was portrayed quite well-done.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
July 9, 2025
Great story about a small college where the fraternity rules all. Can one student, Mark Jessy, with the help of a couple friends, actually stop this group when a student is found dead? There is a lot more to this than you might think and some very powerful and rich people are involved.
April 18, 2020
Immer noch gut. Vielleicht eher eine 4,5.
Der Schreibstil ist gewöhnungsbedürftig, da er sehr ausschweifend ist. In diesem Fall stört mich das jedoch irgendwie nicht.
Der Schreibstil ist gewöhnungsbedürftig, da er sehr ausschweifend ist. In diesem Fall stört mich das jedoch irgendwie nicht.
June 3, 2020
This book had me on the edge of my seat from start to finish! Loved it
October 23, 2021
Read in 2000. This debut novel was a fast moving thriller involving murder, cover-ups and coercion at a small New England university. One of my favorites that year.
January 14, 2025
3rd time reading this book. One of the best books I ever read!!!
December 6, 2024
Read this twenty or so years ago, remembered liking it, and decided to give it a go. It's an absolute time capsule of college life in the late 1990s, and while there are some aspects that haven't aged terribly well, I also can't tell if Kean was writing them as a tongue-in-cheek way to satirize or if he was intending them to come off seriously. Plus, it's a relatively unknown entry in the whole 'dark academia' genre, which is something I'm rather a sucker for. So yeah, I still enjoyed it even two decades later.
You can tell this is a first novel. It's nearly 750 pages, and my only assumption is that Kean somehow slipped this manuscript past any editorial oversight, because there's plenty of bloat that could have been cut. On the other hand, it doesn't read like a 750-page novel, which is a point in its favor. Compare this Donna Tartt's The Secret History, which is a full 100 pages shorter in its mass-market paperback form, but took me much longer to read. There's a reason James Patterson's blurb appears on the cover: it's because this is more 'thriller' than 'literary novel', and thus paces itself accordingly.
The biggest knock against the story is the sheer number of two-dimensional, one-note characters we find in here. Kean's playing with a massive roster of secondary and tertiary characters, all drawn together as a result of this conspiracy of silence surrounding the brutal hazing practices of one specific fraternity at a Maine college: you've got the current brothers of Sigma who are directly responsible for the death of one of their pledges; the high-powered alumni who still oversee the operations of the fraternity and try to sweep the death under the carpet; the administration who know that shutting down Sigma means the loss of millions of dollars in money from the alumni who contribute vast sums to ensure the fraternity continues; the pledges who are all brow-beaten but striving to show their loyalty by not talking; and the protagonist, Mark Jessy, and his girlfriend Shawn Jakes, who, as members of the student-lead Disciplinary Squad, are tasked with investigating the pledge's death so as to avoid any outward appearance of impropriety, but are foiled at nearly every turn by Sigma's ability to throw money at problems and make them evaporate.
There are a lot of people doing a lot of different things in here, and often it would take more than a simple last name for me to recognize who these characters were, because the last time I'd seen them was a hundred pages ago and they sadly weren't that memorable. Kean also spices up some scenes where the various Sigma brothers are meeting to discuss events, but because they follow a tradition where all the members have code-names and wear special robes, none of the brothers refer to the other members by their own names, just Greek letters: Beta, Mu, Rho, Alpha, Delta, and so forth. The game, I'm sure, is to try and connect the letter to the actual person, but the proceedings aren't that interesting, and it's not like solving this puzzle gets you any extra insight into the characters. Nobody in these clandestine meetings is behaving any differently than they are outside of the Sigma house, so it's not like doing so allows you to figure out a major plot twist or anything.
One thing I did enjoy was the poetry. This is basic stuff, classic iambic pentameter in rhyming couplets, but I'm an English nerd so anybody who makes the effort Kean did to make poetry an important aspect of the story will get a thumbs up from me. It's honestly why I remembered this book well enough over the last twenty years to find it again and give it a re-read.
That said, I still enjoyed the book. It didn't take me as long to read as the start and finish dates might imply, as there were several days in there where I was traveling or otherwise didn't have access to the book to read it. On a vacation, this would have been a two-day read for me. Ultimately, I'm disappointed this is the only novel Kean ever wrote. I'd have happily given any sophomore effort a try, but either The Pledge didn't sell well enough despite the Patterson blurb to score a contract, or Kean was one of those writers who only had a single novel in him, he got it out of his system, and went on to other things in life.
A fun, turn-off-your-brain bit of Dark Academia, like reading a film in the The Skulls franchise. You aren't coming here for high lit, just a good time, and on that front, Kean delivers a solid three-star freshman effort.
You can tell this is a first novel. It's nearly 750 pages, and my only assumption is that Kean somehow slipped this manuscript past any editorial oversight, because there's plenty of bloat that could have been cut. On the other hand, it doesn't read like a 750-page novel, which is a point in its favor. Compare this Donna Tartt's The Secret History, which is a full 100 pages shorter in its mass-market paperback form, but took me much longer to read. There's a reason James Patterson's blurb appears on the cover: it's because this is more 'thriller' than 'literary novel', and thus paces itself accordingly.
The biggest knock against the story is the sheer number of two-dimensional, one-note characters we find in here. Kean's playing with a massive roster of secondary and tertiary characters, all drawn together as a result of this conspiracy of silence surrounding the brutal hazing practices of one specific fraternity at a Maine college: you've got the current brothers of Sigma who are directly responsible for the death of one of their pledges; the high-powered alumni who still oversee the operations of the fraternity and try to sweep the death under the carpet; the administration who know that shutting down Sigma means the loss of millions of dollars in money from the alumni who contribute vast sums to ensure the fraternity continues; the pledges who are all brow-beaten but striving to show their loyalty by not talking; and the protagonist, Mark Jessy, and his girlfriend Shawn Jakes, who, as members of the student-lead Disciplinary Squad, are tasked with investigating the pledge's death so as to avoid any outward appearance of impropriety, but are foiled at nearly every turn by Sigma's ability to throw money at problems and make them evaporate.
There are a lot of people doing a lot of different things in here, and often it would take more than a simple last name for me to recognize who these characters were, because the last time I'd seen them was a hundred pages ago and they sadly weren't that memorable. Kean also spices up some scenes where the various Sigma brothers are meeting to discuss events, but because they follow a tradition where all the members have code-names and wear special robes, none of the brothers refer to the other members by their own names, just Greek letters: Beta, Mu, Rho, Alpha, Delta, and so forth. The game, I'm sure, is to try and connect the letter to the actual person, but the proceedings aren't that interesting, and it's not like solving this puzzle gets you any extra insight into the characters. Nobody in these clandestine meetings is behaving any differently than they are outside of the Sigma house, so it's not like doing so allows you to figure out a major plot twist or anything.
One thing I did enjoy was the poetry. This is basic stuff, classic iambic pentameter in rhyming couplets, but I'm an English nerd so anybody who makes the effort Kean did to make poetry an important aspect of the story will get a thumbs up from me. It's honestly why I remembered this book well enough over the last twenty years to find it again and give it a re-read.
That said, I still enjoyed the book. It didn't take me as long to read as the start and finish dates might imply, as there were several days in there where I was traveling or otherwise didn't have access to the book to read it. On a vacation, this would have been a two-day read for me. Ultimately, I'm disappointed this is the only novel Kean ever wrote. I'd have happily given any sophomore effort a try, but either The Pledge didn't sell well enough despite the Patterson blurb to score a contract, or Kean was one of those writers who only had a single novel in him, he got it out of his system, and went on to other things in life.
A fun, turn-off-your-brain bit of Dark Academia, like reading a film in the The Skulls franchise. You aren't coming here for high lit, just a good time, and on that front, Kean delivers a solid three-star freshman effort.
September 14, 2015
I was actually caught off guard by this book.
I almost did not choose to read it - I came across it in a huge bag of books someone gave me and, were it not for the poems on the back cover, most likely would have passed it on without a second glance. Something about it caught my attention, though.
The first few hundred pages were a bit of a slog...felt like the setup of a generic mystery type book.
However, around page 400 or so I began to become truly interested in what was going on, and in fact finished the second half of the book in about 2 days. xD
However, just like the book had a long, somewhat dull introduction, after the exciting climax...it then dragged on for another 50 pages. Not that the events that happened during the conclusion were bad, just...it went on and on and the excitement the end of the 'trial' had brought seemed to fizzle out.
Overall the book was very good, I enjoyed it a great deal. Did I enjoy it enough to read through all 700 pages again, to keep such a large book on my already crammed shelves? No, I think not.
However, it is a good enough book that I will highly suggest it to anyone looking for an interesting, sometimes exciting thriller that's a little bit different from anything I've read before.
I almost did not choose to read it - I came across it in a huge bag of books someone gave me and, were it not for the poems on the back cover, most likely would have passed it on without a second glance. Something about it caught my attention, though.
The first few hundred pages were a bit of a slog...felt like the setup of a generic mystery type book.
However, around page 400 or so I began to become truly interested in what was going on, and in fact finished the second half of the book in about 2 days. xD
However, just like the book had a long, somewhat dull introduction, after the exciting climax...it then dragged on for another 50 pages. Not that the events that happened during the conclusion were bad, just...it went on and on and the excitement the end of the 'trial' had brought seemed to fizzle out.
Overall the book was very good, I enjoyed it a great deal. Did I enjoy it enough to read through all 700 pages again, to keep such a large book on my already crammed shelves? No, I think not.
However, it is a good enough book that I will highly suggest it to anyone looking for an interesting, sometimes exciting thriller that's a little bit different from anything I've read before.
November 7, 2011
While I did read the entire book, I have to admit it was at times a challenge slogging through the author's florid and overwrought prose. This particularly egregious excerpt for example:
"The end of the rhyme gave way to dramatic stillness, as the long shadows had silent sex with the walls and the ceiling and the flags and the secrets."
Where's a good editor when you need one? And the rhyming/poetry is just silly.
The characters were standard: bad guy, good guy, conflicted guy, misunderstood hero, and the beautiful and brilliant heroine who speaks her mind. I was also baffled by the fact that a murder investigation was not being handled by the proper authorities, but rather a committee comprised of college students and their wickedly amoral dean (another stock character).
But I do give the author three stars for composing a fairly interesting read.
"The end of the rhyme gave way to dramatic stillness, as the long shadows had silent sex with the walls and the ceiling and the flags and the secrets."
Where's a good editor when you need one? And the rhyming/poetry is just silly.
The characters were standard: bad guy, good guy, conflicted guy, misunderstood hero, and the beautiful and brilliant heroine who speaks her mind. I was also baffled by the fact that a murder investigation was not being handled by the proper authorities, but rather a committee comprised of college students and their wickedly amoral dean (another stock character).
But I do give the author three stars for composing a fairly interesting read.
April 8, 2016
There’s something rotten at Simsbury College, and it’s housed in the mansion that serves as home to Sigma Delta Phi, a two-hundred year old fraternity where a freshman has died as a result of a brutal hazing. The student-led investigation into that death uncovers a labyrinth of powerful connections and leads to several more deaths as leaders scramble to control the damages and thwart the investigation.
September 17, 2011
I was debating on 3 or 4 stars. I gave it 3 for getting me all excitied and sucking me into a good read but the ending I must admit was a disappointment. I too did not understand why there was a dog on a college campus, but hey I didn't write it. I also thought the first 250 pages could have been condensed down to maybe 75. With that being said... Rob Kean didn't write another book?
September 24, 2009
When a book opens with someone licking up his own vomit, it must be really good for me to continue. It wasn't that good.
I met the ridiculously evil Dean but quit reading before I met the heroine.
I met the ridiculously evil Dean but quit reading before I met the heroine.
December 25, 2009
Forget worrying about fraternity stereotypes & just enjoy this for the fiction that it is. Let your imagination run wild with the insane hazing rituals. The only thing I didn't like was that the poor innocent puppy. Why would a college student have a puppy on campus, especially someone so busy?
Read
July 24, 2011a slow start.,... then picked up during the last 3rd...
Not like the Delta House from the Movie Animal House.. that's for sure..
I think the first 200+ pages could have been condensed...
Not like the Delta House from the Movie Animal House.. that's for sure..
I think the first 200+ pages could have been condensed...
August 23, 2008
Absolutely wonderful book that I found hard to put down. Made me sad reading it because I have no doubt things such as the book portrays go on in life. Highly recommended
Read
March 12, 2009I picked this up in Naples when I was desperate for anything to read
Read
December 31, 2009Should have been condensed - very slow reading until the end, but by then it was to late to save the book
February 20, 2010
New territory for me. Interesting look at conspiracies to extensively manipulate people beginning in college fraternity extending throughout corporate life.
Read
March 26, 2010The Pledge by Rob Kean (1999)
Displaying 1 - 30 of 46 reviews