The Doorman : A Novel

Chicky Diaz stands on his little patch of the earth, the clean quiet sidewalk in front of the Bohemia Apartments, thinking: there sure are a lot of great places to kill someone in this city.

He’s everyone’s favorite doorman at the Bohemia, New York City’s world-famous home of celebrities, financiers, and the cultural elite.

In the penthouse, Emily Longworth seems to lead a perfect life. And while Emily’s husband is perfectly wealthy, she has quietly loathed Whit since well before the recent revelations that he’s a profiteer. But their marriage came with an iron-clad prenup. In apartment 2A, there’s nothing perfect about Julian Sonnenberg’s morning. He’s already struggling with the mundane indignities of turning fifty, and now his doctor says he needs heart surgery. Things are falling apart, fast. Down in the staff room, where the Bohemia’s staff are all Black and Latino, word is spreading that the NYPD has killed an unarmed Black man and the streets are filling with protestors. As Chicky dons his epauletted suit for tonight’s shift, he tucks a pistol into his waistband for the first time ever. Someone, tonight, is going to die.

The Doorman, as The Bonfire of the Vanities did before it, presents a city poised to boil over. Chris Pavone has delivered a thriller that is also about class and privilege, race and racism, principles and sacrifice, love and loyalty. And murder.