The Doorman by Chris Pavone

Published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux/MCD on May 20, 2025

The Doorman is a crime novel in the sense that Colson Whitehead’s recent novels have been crime novels; that is, they use crime to give the story a structure while the real story is about New York City and the division between working class and the wealthy, the clusters of racial groups and ethnicities competing for a slice of the pie. The novels differ in that race and its place in New York City’s history is the dominant theme of Whitehead’s work, while Chris Pavone uses it to provide atmosphere to a crime story.

Most of the story takes place at the Bohemian, an exclusive cooperative building where even a two-bedroom unit on a lower floor sells for millions. Key characters either live or work in the building. Julian Sonnenberg is an art dealer who earned modest wealth during the Obama years by opening a gallery with a Black partner that specialized in artists who were not straight white males. Tides eventually shifted, as tides must, and Julian is having money trouble. He’s undergoing an IRS audit, sold a Rothko of questionable origin to one of the Bohemian’s wealthiest residents, and is feeling his mortality as he prepares for surgery to correct a heart condition.

Chicky Diaz is a doorman at the Bohemian. He also has money problems, mostly medical debt related to unsuccessful treatment to save his wife from cancer. Unrelated to his work, Chicky gets into an altercation with a serious thug who now has leverage over Chicky. That leverage may induce Chicky to facilitate a crime.

Emily Longworth lives in a double-sized unit on the eleventh floor. Most of the school moms in Emily’s social group work for charities or have “careers” as feng shui consultants or interior designers. Emily uses her middle name (Grace) to hide from her friends when she volunteers at a soup kitchen but spends $4 million a year managing her household. Emily is married to Whitaker, whose wealth derives from selling body armor to militaries and terrorists alike. Emily is having an affair and would like a divorce but is stuck with a prenup that would leave her a bit less than a million dollars a year, an amount insufficient to keep her in the world of high society.

Whit has a habit of putting a hand around Emily’s neck during sex. He also pays prostitutes to disguise themselves as Emily so he can choke them more forcefully. In the view of the doorman, who encounters one of Whit’s abused prostitute during his part-time job at a hotel, Whit is rehearsing his wife’s murder. Apart from the unsavory way in which Whit built his wealth, decent readers will dislike Whit for his unrepentant racism and sexism. Emily is rather fed up with one of Whit’s business associates, a disgusting guy who is even more brazenly racist than Whit.

In the background are two police shootings of young Black men. Protestors are swarming the city. They’re also protesting outside Whitaker’s company after news “leaks” about its sales of body armor to countries that support terrorism. The identity of the leaker will probably come as a surprise to most readers.

More than three-quarters of the novel sets the stage for the crime that occurs near the novel’s end. The reader might guess what that crime will be, but the guess will likely be wrong, thanks to Pavone’s skillful misdirection. In a series of frenzied but controlled scenes, the way the crime unfolds comes as a genuine surprise (at least it did to me). That makes The Doorman one of the smartest crime novels I’ve read this year.

Underlying themes of race and class keep the reader engaged as they wait for the criminal climax. Various points of view are represented along the right-left spectrum. The wealth of the Bohemian’s residents contrasts with the working class people who serve them, both in the building and elsewhere in New York City. Chicky frequently comments upon ethnic changes in the city. His first superintendent was Irish, as were all the supers Chicky knew when he started working. The superintendent hired Chicky but didn’t want him to look “ethnic,” prompting Chicky to comment to himself “as if Irish wasn’t an ethnicity.” The super’s successors were Eastern Europeans. “But they were also one white guy after another. Different types of white guys but still.” The building’s residents are almost entirely white and its governing board (on which Julian sits) intends to keep it that way, notwithstanding Julian’s warnings about legal liability.

The building’s staff are now Hispanic (Chicky doesn’t have much use for the term Latinx) thanks to Chicky, who alerted friends to job openings. Chicky notes that other buildings fill their staff with other ethnicities in the same way, word of mouth steering neighborhoods of manual workers into available jobs.

The mix of NYC’s people and criminals (from white collar to violent) add flavor to the novel and give the reader something to chew on while waiting for the crime to occur. It’s a long wait but the story is so entertaining that I wouldn’t expect most readers to grow impatient. And when the crime finally arrives, the story becomes tense as characters the reader will probably like are placed at risk. Some are unexpectedly heroic, others are true to character, and one will behave in a way that few readers will expect. The shock value of the final pages, combined with the engaging look at urban life that precedes them, makes The Doorman an essential read for fans of crime novels who are looking for a break from stories of tough guys enforcing morality with their fists.

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Two Nights in Lisbon by Chris Pavone

Published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux/MCD on May 24, 2022

Before she changed her name, Laurel Turner was raped at a party hosted by her rapist, who was both a well-known businessman and her wealthy husband’s business partner. Years later, he became a powerful politician. As we have learned from #MeToo, powerful men have a long history of sexually abusing women without consequence.

After dumping her unsupportive husband, Laurel changed her name to Ariel Pryce and bought a bookstore in a small town where she raised her son. She eventually married John Wright, a younger man who earned a good living doing something related to finance.

The story begins in Lisbon. Wright is there on a business trip and has taken Ariel with him, something he never did before. He goes out for coffee in the morning while Ariel is still sleeping and is kidnapped as he leaves the hotel. When she discovers he is missing, Ariel spends a frantic day talking to the police and the American Embassy, where she attracts the attention of the CIA. Ariel receives a ransom demand for more money than she has, forcing her to seek help from the one person she never wanted to see again — a person who is forced to help because Ariel is positioned to ruin his life if he doesn’t.

Nobody is quite sure whether to believe Ariel, as kidnappings in Lisbon are rare and Wright does not seem like an obvious kidnap victim. The CIA doesn’t know what to make of Wright’s sister, who recently traveled to Lisbon from her home in Morocco. The reader will probably be equally puzzled by events that don’t quite add up. That’s part of the fun in a novel that invites the reader to guess the truth about the characters’ motivations.

While the novel’s focus is on Ariel, other notable characters include Lisbon police officers, a CIA agent in Lisbon who keeps an eye on potential threats to national security, a lawyer pal of Ariel, and a newspaper reporter. Ariel is the only character who is presented in full, but characterization of supporting players is adequate for a plot-driven novel.

The story explores a couple of social issues, particularly the use of nondisclosure agreements to conceal evidence of sexual abuse. The tendency of the public to judge others based on evidence-free media posts — and their feeling of entitlement to confront those they judge — is a lesser theme, but one that is certainly timely.

A reader might guess the truth behind Wright’s kidnapping, or at least some of it, but a substantial part of the ending is likely to come as a surprise. Chris Pavone develops the clever plot with skill, keeps the first two-thirds of the story in rapid motion, and conveys Ariel’s sense of anxous urgency as she deals with characters from whom she needs help. Pavone also conveys the consequences of the kidnapping plot on Ariel’s life, creating sympathy and support for Ariel that extends beyond her victimization. The novel loses some energy in its later stages, but Ariel’s ability to take charge of her life makes it easy to cheer for her until the story reaches its satisfying conclusion.

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The Travelers by Chris Pavone

Published by Crown on March 8, 2016

Will Rhodes writes for a travel magazine called Travelers, having been hired by a newly promoted editor after the former editor mysteriously disappeared. Will’s job is to travel to interesting places, eat good food, and stay up late drinking with strangers. Nice work if you can get it, but he’s burdened with debt, his wife is cranky about his unavailability, and his fidelity is tested by a gorgeous Australian he meets on a trip to France.

While in France, Will stumbles across someone who doesn’t want to be found, setting the plot in motion. We also see glimpses of a nondescript office full of nondescript employees who monitor the movements of designated individuals, Will among them. And we see Will’s boss disappearing into a secret room, so we know he’s something more than a travel editor.

In fact, every key character is living with secrets. Even Will, eventually. The fact that so many interrelated characters are not who they appear to be is improbable, but I was willing to suspend my disbelief because the improbable lives all contribute to the story’s entertainment value. Guessing the exact nature of those secrets, and whether various characters are working at cross-purposes, is part of the fun. Distinguishing good guys from bad guys is no easy task, thanks to a well-designed plot that manages to be intricate without becoming convoluted.

Originality is the story’s strongest asset. I can’t recall reading another spy novel that has a plot quite like this one. Will’s personality is developed with reasonable care, and while there is less fullness to the other characters, they at least come across as real people. Chris Pavone’s prose is better-than-average, the story moves with a good pace, and the atmosphere in the story’s various settings is convincing.

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