Framed!

The cliffhanger is a storytelling device wherein a section of the narrative ends with an unresolved question or situation. This method is commonly used in television to keep the audience engaged through commercial breaks, and it is likewise used in novels at the end of chapters to keep the readers turning pages. Because James Ponti has worked for years in television, he is experienced at using this device, and because Ponti uses it so frequently, it has become one of the text’s motifs and reappears in a few different ways.

One of the more effective ways that Ponti uses the cliffhanger is when he stops the action at a crucial moment, such as the end of the Chapter 9, when Agent Rivers declares that he is taking Florian to FBI headquarters. The chapter ends without explanation, raising questions about Florian’s immediate future. Ponti also drops heavily loaded statements in the final sentences of various passages to achieve the same effect, as when Florian obscurely declares in Chapter 1 that Nevrescu’s tattoo changes everything about the story. This statement implies that greater revelations await in the novel’s final chapters.