“It’s up to everyone to draw a line, and hold it.”

Chris Pavone writes white-knuckle thrillers, and he’s one of the best in the business. His new novel, The Doorman, is one you won’t want to miss. My thanks go to NetGalley, Macmillan Audio, and Farrar, Strauss and Giroud for the review copies; this book will be available to the public May 20, 2025.

Our story rotates around three main characters, providing the point of view of each in turn; the setting is The Bohemia, an exclusive apartment building in New York City. Julian Sonnenberg, a middle aged art gallerist whose marriage is dying, lives there, as does Emily Longsworth, wife of the ultra-wealthy and ultra-hated Whit Longworth, racist war profiteer; and Chicky Diaz is the doorman, who sees all and hears all. They don’t know it yet, but their fates will soon be linked.

I’ve been reading Pavone’s novels for a long time, and each time he surpasses himself. The common thread that I treasure most, however, is his deep affinity for the working class, and his respect for women. In fact, I don’t know of any male novelist that is better than Pavone when it comes to developing female characters, and that is even more impressive when I consider his genre, because in most true thrillers, the pace is so fast and furious that there’s no time to develop any characters at all. Yet somehow, Pavone does it, and he does it without sacrificing the heart pounding, screaming pace that accelerates until the almost unbearable climax, which in turn is very close to the conclusion.

I was lucky enough to have access to both the digital and audio versions of this story; Edoardo Ballerini does a fine job narrating the latter. You can’t go wrong in either direction.

Highly recommended to those that love the genre and lean to the left.