“The Pawn” by Peyton Cassel is told from the point of view of a vengeful wife who murders her husband when he least expects it. It’s thrilling and heart-pounding, and Cassel does an amazing job characterizing Tracy and Garret, the two main characters. In the piece, Tracy kills Garret while playing a game of chess with him. During his final moments she explains her reasoning in a few cryptic, chilling lines. Right as her husband was about to die, Tracy whispered, “Oh, darling, don’t you see?’ Her lips inches from his ear. ‘I’d rather be that pawn.” Both Tracy’s calculating genius and the author’s exquisite use of dialogue draw the reader in to this suspenseful fiction piece.
             What makes “The Pawn” such a well- written story is how it causes the readers to empathize with Tracy, even when she does something as awful as murder her husband. Garret treated his wife with no respect at all – more like an object than a person, and it’s easy to see how Tracy’s anger at him could have accumulated over time. When Garret says things like, “‘Tardiness. Not an admirable quality in a wife,’” even the reader is outraged on Tracy’s behalf. Although hopefully no one in reality would resort to such measures to escape an unhappy marriage, Cassel’s elegant vocabulary and detailed descriptions put the mind of a killer in a whole new perspective.