Elevator Pitch
Linwood Barclay
I really like Linwood Barclay. I’ve previously reviewed his thriller, Look Both Ways, and this is another story that cuts to the heart of modern societal worries.
Is there anything so banal and ubiquitous as an elevator? We rarely think about them; they are simply essential infrastructure that allow us to live a vertical existence. Unless they are out of order, or overcrowded, they are simply in the background, unnoticed and unremarked upon. Yet without them, we would be limited to living, working and playing in buildings just a few stories high.
Manhattan is defined by the skyscraper. New Yorkers spend much of their lives dozens of stories above the ground.
But with 70,000-odd elevators, every so often there will be an accident. Usually a maintenance worker falling down an open shaft. Occasionally, something goes wrong and a passenger is hurt or killed.
So when a lift fails on a Monday morning, sending a car with four passengers plunging to their death, it’s a tragedy, but these things happen.
Tuesday, in what appears to be an unrelated coincidence, there is another gruesome accident.
When it happens again on Wednesday, authorities realise that perhaps these aren’t unrelated accidents and a city that only really exists because of elevators is thrown into chaos.
Is there anything so banal and ubiquitous as an elevator? We rarely think about them; they are simply essential infrastructure that allow us to live a vertical existence. Unless they are out of order, or overcrowded, they are simply in the background, unnoticed and unremarked upon. Yet without them, we would be limited to living, working and playing in buildings just a few stories high.
Manhattan is defined by the skyscraper. New Yorkers spend much of their lives dozens of stories above the ground.
But with 70,000-odd elevators, every so often there will be an accident. Usually a maintenance worker falling down an open shaft. Occasionally, something goes wrong and a passenger is hurt or killed.
So when a lift fails on a Monday morning, sending a car with four passengers plunging to their death, it’s a tragedy, but these things happen.
Tuesday, in what appears to be an unrelated coincidence, there is another gruesome accident.
When it happens again on Wednesday, authorities realise that perhaps these aren’t unrelated accidents and a city that only really exists because of elevators is thrown into chaos.
All the Linwood Barclay ingredients are here. Strong, well-developed characters, a sense of impending doom, twists, turns and a splash of dry humour. The pacing is spot on, the very definition of a ‘page-turner’. And the final, action-packed denouement is worthy of any multi-million-dollar blockbuster movie.
I heartily recommend this novel for fans of Linwood Barclay and thrillers that make you question the very things that you have taken for granted.
