HARPERCOLLINS/William Morrow
[This review was originally posted on Patreon.]
AUTHOR: Linwood Barclay
ISBN: 978-0-06-267828-7; hardcover; 6 in x 9 in; (September 17, 2019)
464pp, B&W, $26.99 U.S.
Elevator Pitch is a 2019 novel written by Linwood Barclay, the author of such bestselling novels as No Time for Goodbye and Trust Your Eyes. In Elevator Pitch, two veteran New York police detectives are trying to unravel the mystery of a strange and brutal murder, while a straight-shooting journalist attempts to discover why elevators in New York City are killing people, both of which may be the work of a notorious American terrorist group.
Elevator Pitch opens in New York City on a Monday when it all begins. At the Lansing Tower on Third between Fifty-Ninth and Sixtieth, four people board an elevator in the Manhattan office tower, each pressing a button for their floor. The elevator, however, is contrary and proceeds straight to the top floor... before plummeting non-stop right to the bottom of the elevator shaft. Three of the passengers are killed and a fourth is mortally wounded.
One of the victims is a young woman named Paula Chatsworth. Three years earlier, Paula had been an intern for the online publication, Manhattan Today, where Barbara Matheson reigns as the top columnist who has a reputation as a straight-shooter. At first, Barbara's focus is on the tragic death of Paula and on her grieving parents, but then, Paula discovers that mysterious men in black SUVs don't want Paula's parents talking to the press.
Still, the elevator accident at Lansing seems like nothing more than a random tragedy, horrific though it is. Then, on Tuesday, at the Sycamores Residences, below Sixty-Third, there is another elevator-related fatality. This time, the incident seems to have a ghastly and macabre sense of humor about it. When Wednesday brings more elevator death, this time at the Gormley Building on Seventh Avenue between Sixteenth and Seventeenth, New York City, America's capital of finance, entertainment, and media, falls into a state of fear and chaos. NYC is a vertical city; it cannot function without elevators. If this is an attempt to terrorize the city, who is behind it?
Meanwhile, Detective Jerry Bourque and his partner, Detective Lois Delgado, are investigating the homicide of a man whose body was found on the “High Line.” His face was beaten in until it was unrecognizable, and his fingertips have all been removed. A lucky break leads Bourque and Delgado to believe that their victim might be connected to the elevator sabotage, and the victim could somehow be connected to a domestic terrorist group, “the Flyovers,” that has been targeting cities along the coasts of America.
Are the incidents of elevator-sabotage, the High Line murder, and the Flyovers connected? Working separately, Barbara Matheson and the team of Bourque and Delgado will have to answer all those questions... and son. NYC's latest “big event” is a ribbon-cutting, on Thursday, for the city's newest, and tallest, residential tower, “Top of the Park.” Practically, everyone who is anyone will be there. So, it's the perfect time and place for terror, mayhem, and elevator mass murder.
THE LOWDOWN: Inside the front cover flap of the book jacket, the cover copy declares that Elevator Pitch is “...an edge-of-your-seat thriller that does for elevators what Psycho did for showers and Jaws did for the beach...” This is a bit of expected salesmanship on the part of William Morrow's marketing division, but I would not call it an overstatement.
Psycho and Jaws are movies, and they were, relative to the time of their respective releases, big hits at the movie theater box office. Both films were based on books – Psycho a 1959 novel of the same name and Jaws a 1974 novel of the same name – and both films have overshadowed, outlived, and out-shined the books that were their source material.
Elevator Pitch is only a novel, but if it were also a movie, a lot of people would be scared shitless of elevators after seeing it. Yeah, they would still get on elevators, but some of them would start to think that being in an elevator is like being in a shower with a knife-wielding great white shark. If a studio could make an Elevator Pitch movie that is as chilling as Elevator Pitch the novel is, movie audiences would have a brand new thrill ride to terrorize them into the summer.
Seriously, though, Elevator Pitch, which was released in hardcover in 2019 and in paperback earlier this year, is such a stone-cold killer of a novel because its author, Linwood Barclay, is an especially effective writer of suspense fiction and of thrillers. When Barclay starts killing his characters on elevators, there comes a point when readers will believe that any part of the story that takes place even in the vicinity of an elevator will soon turn from character drama to character butchery. I know that I started to feel a sense of dread every time the story moved into a building with an elevator.
Elevator Pitch even has a quote from Stephen King on the front of its book jacket, which says, “One hell of a suspense novel.” That is certainly true, and Elevator Pitch is one of those suspense novels that won't let you stop turning the pages. You can't stop, and you “can't hardly wait,” to get to the next page and to the next chapter.
A synopsis of Elevator Pitch really doesn't do justice to the entirety of the narrative. There are a lot more characters than I mentioned above, and there are a few back stories and several sub-plots. They all serve the story, and a few act as effective red herrings to keep the readers' imaginations on overdrive. The only fault that I find with the novel is that I wish it had focused a little more on the personalities of a few of the characters, for instance, Detectives Bourque and Delgado.
That aside, Elevator Pitch is the perfect pot-boiler novel for any book season. As long as there are elevators and other vertical transportation machines like that, Elevator Pitch will have a spot in our imaginations, in the places we like to be scared. Elevator Pitch will be waiting for us... it's sliding doors always open.
I READS YOU RECOMMENDS: Fans of Linwood Barclay and of suspense thrillers will want to read Elevator Pitch.
8 out of 10
Reviewed by Leroy Douresseaux a.k.a. "I Reads You"
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