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The Doorman

A Novel

ebook
0 of 2 copies available
Wait time: About 4 weeks
0 of 2 copies available
Wait time: About 4 weeks

A pulse-pounding novel of class, privilege, sex, and murder, from the New York Times bestselling author of Two Nights in Lisbon and The Expats.

Chicky Diaz is everyone's favorite doorman at the Bohemia, the most famous apartment house in the world, home of celebrities, financiers, and New York's cultural elite.
Up in the penthouse, Emily Longworth has the perfect-looking everything, all except her husband, whom she'd quietly loathed even before the recent revelations about where all the money comes from. But his wealth is immense, their prenup is iron-clad, and Emily can't bring herself to leave him. Yet.
And downstairs in 2a, Julian Sonnenberg—who has carved himself a successful niche in the art world, and led a good half-century of a full and satisfying, cosmopolitan life—has just received a devastating phone call that does nothing at all to alleviate his sense that, probably for better and worse, he has aged out and he's just not that useful to anyone any more.
Meanwhile, gathered in the Bohemia's bowels, the building's almost entirely Black and Hispanic, working-class staff is taking in the news that that just a few miles uptown, a Black man has been killed by the police, leading to a demonstration, a counterdemonstration, and a long night of violence across the tinderbox city.
As Chicky changes into his uniform for tonight's shift, he finds himself breaking a cardinal rule of the job: tonight, he'll be carrying a gun, bought only hours earlier, but before he knew of the pandemonium taking over the city. Chicky knows that there's more going on in his patch of sidewalk in front of the Bohemia than anyone's aware of. Tonight in the city, enemies will clash, loyalties will be tested, secrets will be revealed—and lives will be lost.

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    • Library Journal

      December 1, 2024

      Award-winning and bestselling Pavone (Two Nights in Lisbon) offers a new thriller set in New York City. Chicky Diaz is a doorman at the ritzy Bohemia Apartments, home to the rich and famous. On a night when chaos and protests erupt in the streets, Chicky becomes drawn into a web of intrigue--and murder. With a 150K-copy first printing. Prepub Alert.

      Copyright 2024 Library Journal

      Copyright 2024 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

    • Booklist

      April 7, 2025
      For decades, doorman Chicky Diaz has greeted and guarded the Bohemia's residents with a smile, smiling even as his wife's cancer battle left him buried in loneliness and debt. Emily Longworth, the conflicted wife of sociopathic arms dealer Whit, is confronting the realization that she's trapped in a Faustian bargain: behind smiles and choreographed affection, the Longworths hate each other. Their neighbor, gallerist Julian Sonnenburg, is drawn to Emily by shared discomfort with their peers' elitism and casual mistreatment of others. As New York City erupts in protest after two police shootings of Black men, media leaks expose Whit's unscrupulous sales to brutal regimes. The resulting storm of collective rage breaks over the Bohemia, where Chicky, Emily, Julian, and Whit's lives depend on choosing their loyalties wisely. In a departure from his previous fast-paced thrillers (starting with The Expats, 2012), Pavone devotes much of this novel to developing social commentary through clever observations of class division. The climax, however, is classic Pavone, masterfully igniting the parallel conflicts of social unrest and the Longworths' escalating viciousness.

      COPYRIGHT(2025) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

    • Kirkus

      May 1, 2025
      A Manhattan doorman faces unwanted excitement in this thriller by the author ofTwo Nights in Lisbon(2022). Ex-Marine Chicky Diaz has been a doorman at the Bohemia Apartments for 28 years. He is "relentlessly upbeat," never breaks rules, never bad-mouths anyone. Everyone trusts him. He unfailingly greets each resident by name as they come and go--"Welcome home Mr. Goff" and "Let me get that bag for you Mrs. Frumm"--and seems unbothered by the financial and social chasm separating them from him. Chicky idly muses that anyone could kill or be killed around there with no one knowing it was going to happen. Nice foreshadowing, that. A widower with two daughters in college, he faces a mountain of unpaid medical bills because of his late wife's cancer, and he owes a ton of back rent. By stark contrast, the Bohemia's residents are all filthy rich. The building is "littered with Picassos, Chagalls, Renoirs. It's practically a museum." Wealthiest among them are Emily and Whit Longworth, a billionaire couple due to his business selling high-tech body armor. Before meeting Whit, Emily once cried after accidentally wasting 90 cents for an unneeded onion. And then her great beauty and sexual talent lead to matrimony and a family. Wanting to be a good person, she volunteers at a food pantry and quickly learns that it's not cool to show up for duty in a bleeping taxi. Not wanting to be a good person, Whit finds his eye wandering to hookers, and what he does with them is scary. The quiet hatred growing between Emily and Whit is key to the plot. Meanwhile, beyond the Bohemia, there is social unrest after multiple reports of cops or white-supremacist thugs killing innocent Black men. Will there be riots? More to the point, will they affect the Bohemia's wealthy residents? For his part, Chicky bears no one any ill will. He neither carries a weapon nor cares to and would just as soon be a passive observer. But he suffers a beatdown from a gang member named El Pu�o (The Fist) and is advised to apologize to the thug for having given offense. This leads to the bad guys learning what wealth lies inside those apartments. A plan develops. Will bullets fly? Will blood flow? Is the pope Catholic? Social, racial, and political commentary add color to the profanity-peppered pages. Readers will root for the doorman in this enjoyable yarn.

      COPYRIGHT(2025) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

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