Melvin Levin is a middle-aged man who is dissatisfied with his dull and mediocre life. That is, he was until he received a mysterious death threat in the mail. Terrified at first, Levin soon becomes accustomed to the threat-and then, increasingly, delighted with it, thrilled with his newfound importance as a "threatened man." But as his obsession with maintaining this identity becomes all-consuming, he risks blinding himself to the twin dangers of the threat itself and-perhaps worse-his own deranged mind. At once absurdist, moving, and savagely funny, The Threat is a timeless parable of the comic lengths to which people go to protect the delusions that validate them.