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Big Question
A Fortune For the Asking -- with the Answers in Advance
Peter Roland wows the nation with his winning streak on the game show Treble or Tremble and the likelihood that he could win the half-a-million dollar grand prize. Actually, it's pretty much assured that he will since he's been fed all the answers. But that's not the secret that he's terrified will be revealed. What will twenty million TV viewers think of him when they find out that his ex-wife was a prositute? She is threatening to tell all unless he remarries and agrees to split his winnings with her. He needs to find a way to silence his ex...and keep his winnings and there seems to only one right answer.
"You don’t like snide, jaded narrator-protagonist Peter Roland upon meeting him. It’s that not long after, you do like him. And then you don’t. And then you do. He absolutely has a sincere moral center. Yet he always weighs whether or not it will serve him. He will sometimes do the right thing for the wrong reason. He thinks about sex, but also thinks about its risk factor. He doesn’t play by the rules because of their inherent rightness; but rather because he sees the value in them. And he’ll easily weigh the value of breaking them. So why the hell are we rooting for him? Because he speaks to our own ambivalence." David Spencer, from his new Afterword to this edition.
Peter Roland wows the nation with his winning streak on the game show Treble or Tremble and the likelihood that he could win the half-a-million dollar grand prize. Actually, it's pretty much assured that he will since he's been fed all the answers. But that's not the secret that he's terrified will be revealed. What will twenty million TV viewers think of him when they find out that his ex-wife was a prositute? She is threatening to tell all unless he remarries and agrees to split his winnings with her. He needs to find a way to silence his ex...and keep his winnings and there seems to only one right answer.
"You don’t like snide, jaded narrator-protagonist Peter Roland upon meeting him. It’s that not long after, you do like him. And then you don’t. And then you do. He absolutely has a sincere moral center. Yet he always weighs whether or not it will serve him. He will sometimes do the right thing for the wrong reason. He thinks about sex, but also thinks about its risk factor. He doesn’t play by the rules because of their inherent rightness; but rather because he sees the value in them. And he’ll easily weigh the value of breaking them. So why the hell are we rooting for him? Because he speaks to our own ambivalence." David Spencer, from his new Afterword to this edition.
Paperback
Published January 1, 1960
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