Code of Silence
by Shantel Tessier · Independent · 2020
An arranged-marriage mafia thriller that weaponizes a decade-old betrayal as its primary anticipation engine, alternating Luca and Haven first-person-present chapters so the reader is locked inside both the predator and the captive at once. It front-loads a child-murder prologue to set a violence ceiling, then meters explicit payoff against escalating danger so attachment and dread climb together.
Engineered signals
Six estimated signals for how hard this title works the immersion engine, each scored on the same 0–100 scale so books compare directly. Directional, not exact — see the methodology below.
What this book is tagged
The full tag set, grouped by dimension. Heat & Kink and Content Warnings are the explicit signals — surfaced, not buried in a flat trope list.
Genre & Setting
Structure & POV
Relationship Tropes
Hero Archetypes
Heroine Archetypes
Heat & Kink
Content Warnings
Pairing & Orientation
Location
Estimated. These charts visualize the engineered signals — arc shape, trope weights, and the 0–100 profile are analytical estimates from automated text sampling, directional rather than exact.
Share of page-time spent on buildup and tension rather than payoff. High values mean the book sells the wait, not the moment.
How strongly the narration collapses the gap between reader and protagonist, peaking with first-person, reader-insert voice.
The "book boyfriend" pull: how hard the text works to form a one-sided attachment to a love interest.
Cliffhanger and serial-loop intensity — the compulsion to start the next chapter or installment.
How steeply intensity ramps across the arc. A steep slope is the tolerance signal: each payoff has to outdo the last.
Query the text itself
Beyond the scores: select a pre-determined query to read real keyword-in-context excerpts from the book’s text, located across its arc. Counts are first-pass lexical-pattern matches across the full text, refined as the analysis matures.
Excerpts are short keyword-in-context fragments from Code of Silence by Shantel Tessier (2020), quoted for research and commentary under fair use — a bounded window around each match, not continuous text.
Acts
Anatomy
Dynamics & Kink
Buildup
Emotional
Mentions of Backside
61 matches · showing 6
| Ch. | Page | Matched fragment |
|---|---|---|
| 3 | 9 | … to the ground before he grabs at his blood covered chest and neck. I snort, watching his sorry ass flop around like a fish out of water. I turn, giving him my back, because I’m done playing … |
| 3 | 11 | … staff and faculty turn a blind eye. They don’t care. They get paid to teach our ungrateful, spoiled asses. Why should they give a fuck who shows and who doesn’t? “Hey, you girls wanna help me out … |
| 3 | 13 | … just trying to get into trouble today?” “What? That idiot hit me with the door.” She rubs her ass. “He’s a member of the Dark Kings,” Emilee whispers, her eyes darting around the now empty hallway. Jasmine … |
| 3 | 13 | … don’t bow to anyone. And just ’cause you suck a Kings’s dick doesn’t mean I gotta kiss one’s ass.” I hang my head. “Can we get back on track—” “I gotta go,” Jasmine interrupts me. “But yeah, … |
| 4 | 16 | … fathers and rule the world. Emilie, Jasmine, and I chose to stay because we didn’t wanna leave each other behind. We knew that day would come eventually, but we’re trying to put it off for as long … |
| 5 | 23 | … so I gave up asking. “I imagined your nails scraping down my back. Your heels digging into my ass. Speaking of ass …” His hand cups it and lifts me off my feet. I shriek in surprise … |
Where the content lands
Not just how much, but where. Each content category is mapped across the chapter arc — buildup spread thin, explicit acts concentrated at the payoff chapters.
Acts
Anatomy
Dynamics & Kink
Buildup
Emotional
How explicit is this, really?
A single title means little in isolation. Set against the indexed catalog, the scale of this book's explicit content becomes legible.
More explicit than 91% of the indexed catalog · #14 of 180 · 2.6 scenes / 100 pp
How these metrics are derived
The book is a real published work; the signals below are produced by sampling its text and scoring each on a common 0–100 scale, so titles can be compared on the same axes.
Estimated. Every signal on this page is an analytical estimate from automated text sampling — directional, not an exact measurement — and the arc curves are illustrative shapes, not chapter-by-chapter readings.
- Anticipation Ratio
- Share of page-time spent on buildup and tension rather than payoff. High values mean the book sells the wait, not the moment.
- Explicit Density
- Explicit scenes per 100 pages — how concentrated the payoff is across the length of the book.
- POV Immersion
- How strongly the narration collapses the gap between reader and protagonist, peaking with first-person, reader-insert voice.
- Parasocial Index
- The "book boyfriend" pull: how hard the text works to form a one-sided attachment to a love interest.
- Serialization
- Cliffhanger and serial-loop intensity — the compulsion to start the next chapter or installment.
- Escalation Slope
- How steeply intensity ramps across the arc. A steep slope is the tolerance signal: each payoff has to outdo the last.