Show Time, by Terry P. Rizzuti, is a literary novel that examines numerous symptom- simularities in the PTSD found in abused women and combat veterans. Some sociologists say violence in America is declining; others take an opposing view. Rizzuti's perception is that violence is not only increasing but that individual incidents have so escalated toward the utterly fantastic, the truly bizarre, that the very fabric comprising our families and nation is unraveling.

This novel addresses contemporary dysfunctional relationships that have grown out of a cancerous patriarchy feeding on the healthy cells of love and beauty as defined by a media that exists to sell product. This isn't funny stuff; it's tragic. Like the American Dream, relationships are packaged to sell. Expectations are built on fifteen-minute segments. Real life problems are represented as solvable in an hour, less commercials. "A chicken in every pot" is laughable as quaint history, but our lived reality is that we believe in "happily ever after" with no mention of the literal or emotional beatings our women take in the grim silence of expectations and social "fronting."

Remember Zappa? "If your children knew how lame you are they'd murder you in your sleep," or something like that. He wasn't talking about what it's like at church on Sunday. He was looking behind the closed doors of our society's marriages. And education and class make absolutely no difference. It is endemic and epidemic. Like Pynchon's descriptions in V of the German/Boer perception of themselves in Sudafrika, men in our society are socialized to leave society at the door, put on their comfy clothes and wallow in whatever treatment of their women suits them.

Show Time’s antagonist isn't so much a closet monster as he is the American male exposed. Our fathers didn't think much of slapping our mothers around, even if they did it out of sight. It was just "showing them who is boss, king in their own castle." Relationship has meant ownership, and people are not meant to be owned. The grimness behind closed doors took the shape of the particular owner (not altogether different from Southern slavery), the particular psychological/sociological cancer from which they suffered. Show Time’s antagonist is on your bowling team; he's your coffee buddy at work, your boss, your employee, your preacher, your sports hero, your traffic cop, your doctor.

The story herein is not unusual except for local particulars. It is chilling because the characters are people you meet each and every day. Ted Bundy was a swell looking guy and a great student. The tragedy is that, like Romeo and Juliet, the best of expectations lead to the worst of relational results. The key is the shock of it being the people next door, the most likely to succeed, the prom queen and star halfback. 

So this article is a call to agents, editors, publishers and general readers:  please consider reviewing this novel.  Let Rizzuti know how you reacted to it.  He genuinely appreciates your time and looks forward to hearing from you.