The Contestant

Rudman’s modern-day answer to Stephen King’s The Running Man is his best yet!
James H Longmore

Self-made millionaire realtor, Chase Lennon, has more money than he could ever possibly spend in his – or his children’s – lifetime, yet when he receives an anonymous opportunity to become a billionaire by participating in an exclusive game show, greed and ego take over, and he snaps it up in a heartbeat.

All he has to do is not kill himself for one week.

Easy enough, right?

Not when he’s being ruthlessly framed for an increasingly brutal series of slayings across the US, each in a different state carrying the death penalty.

At first, it all appears to be an elaborate, deepfake, set-up by the show’s producers. But as the pressure mounts, Lennon’s wife turns against him, and his face is all over the news, he realizes the whole thing is terrifyingly real: he’s a wanted man, hunted by the FBI as a psychotic killer.

With the lines between fiction and reality increasingly blurred, assistance comes in the unlikely form of a young woman who claims to be a disgruntled producer out to end the show – but can she be trusted? With no other choice, Lennon’s time on The Contestant becomes a fight to stay alive when there seems to be only one feasible way out.