The Plot

The next morning, Jake’s schedule includes a radio show before his flight to San Francisco. He meets the station’s director of programming, Anna Williams. Her age is hard to guess (she has fashionably gray hair), but he is attracted to her. Jake considers himself rather inexperienced sexually. He has only been with a few women, including the poet Alice from Ripley College.

The radio show is hosted by Randy Johnson, a terrible right-wing personality who hasn’t read Jake’s book. Randy complains Anna made him do the interview, and they discuss how Jake got a movie deal with Spielberg as director. Anna asks Jake to get coffee after the interview, and he agrees.

Anna and Jake go to Storyville coffee, where they mostly talk about Anna. She alludes to a bad home life as a kid and claims her hair went gray from caring for her adopted mom before she passed. She says she’s in her mid-thirties, like Jake. Jake, smitten, dodges her question about where he gets his ideas by copying Stephen King’s answer: Utica, the name of a town in upstate New York. Anna notes this answer differs from the one he gave in the interview the previous night. They kiss goodbye and he heads to his flight.

Once in his car, Jake finds a message through the contact page of his website from someone using the pseudonym “Talented Tom.” Talented Tom calls Jake a thief and includes an excerpt from his novel Crib. The excerpt is about a 15-year-old named Samantha finding out she’s pregnant. She lives in Norwich with her parents, who work in housekeeping at the local college. Because of this connection, the intelligent Samantha hopes to eventually get a scholarship there. However, she wound up pregnant because a guy lied to her, and she does not want the child.

Jake keeps the threatening message a secret, and travels to California as planned. After San Francisco, he goes to LA for movie talks. When he returns to New York, there is another threatening message from Talented Tom. Jake reflects that the only other people who have used the contact page of his website were fans, old friends, and fellow writers. Then, wondering why this initial contact is private, he thinks about his other public social media accounts: He has never let his publisher handle them because he fears a commenter could expose his use of Evan’s plot.

The Talented Tom pseudonym alludes both to the real-life Patricia Highsmith novel The Talented Mr. Ripley and to the college where Evan and Jake met. Fittingly for Jake’s novel Crib (and eventually for the novel The Plot itself), The Talented Mr. Ripley is also about a shady character who takes another’s identity. Jake is afraid to answer the messages, so he turns off his phone and router. For the next four days he curls up on his couch eating cupcakes and drinking Jameson while imagining various scenarios with Talented Tom.

When Jake turns his phone and router back on, he sees a new message from Talented Tom, as well as messages from Anna. We learn that Anna is in fact posing as Tom; she is also flirting with Jake as Anna after their coffee date.

Jake gets back to writing his next novel. A month later, in October, new threatening messages from Talented Tom say Tom will go public on Twitter.

Jake researches Evan online, starting with his memorial page. From the notes left there, Jake finds a connection to Ripley College: Evan’s friend Martin was at Ripley when Jake taught there, but Jake doesn’t remember him. Jake stalks Martin’s Facebook and finds a group for Ripley writing workshop alums. In this group, Jake sees posts about Evan’s drug overdose. Jake also learns that Evan’s family has a long history in Vermont and that Evan used to run a tavern.

Anna texts Jake while he is doing this research, annoyed when he takes too long to reply. Jake emails Martin, who immediately calls Jake. They talk about Jake’s book, Evan, and the deaths of Evan’s parents and sister. Martin only saw the same beginning pages of Evan’s story as Jake, and doubts Evan ever wrote the rest of the book. Martin asks Jake to look at some of his writing and offer feedback.

This chapter ends with another excerpt from Crib: Samantha refuses to tell her parents who got her pregnant, though the reader knows it was her mom’s boss, who lied about having a vasectomy. Crib includes flashbacks to his seduction and Samantha’s attraction. Samantha laments that she doesn’t know how to get an abortion.

Matilda, Jake’s agent, pushes for him to finish his next book, and tells him that Crib is getting another printing, attesting to its popularity. Anna texts him about visiting New York City—hurling herself at him—and he replies that he wants to see her. Jake has no suspicions that Anna is Talented Tom. He orders some furniture to prepare for her arrival.

Anna comes to visit in late November, and Jake is excited to see her. She almost immediately sleeps with him, and they spend two days in bed. Eventually, Anna starts spending her mornings sightseeing alone (or so Jake thinks), and one night they see a play together.

During their last dinner before she goes back to Seattle, Jake asks about Anna past. Anna claims that after her mom committed suicide, an aunt who was bad at parenting raised her until a teacher took her in for a few years. Her sister stayed with their aunt, and they disappeared—Anna doesn’t know where they are. Anna’s teacher died, leaving some money for Anna in her will. Jake buys this story.

They talk about social media; Anna says she only uses it to look for her sister or aunt, just waiting for a message to upend her life. Anna is subtly hinting at the messages she’s been sending Jake as Talented Tom, but he is oblivious, and they go back to talking about his book and writing in general.

The next Crib excerpt is about what happens after Samantha’s Christian parents stop her from getting an abortion. The pregnancy’s health complications cause Samantha to leave school, and her parents won’t let her give up the baby for adoption, but make her keep it as punishment.