and The Wall Street Journal; have won both the Edgar and Anthony awards; are in development for film and television; and have been translated into two dozen languages. Pavone grew up in Brooklyn, graduated from Cornell, and worked as a book editor for nearly two decades. He lives in New York City and on the North Fork of Long Island with his family.
Pavone applied the Page 69 Test to his new novel, The Doorman, with the following results:
On page 69, doorman Chicky Diaz is asking his boss Olek if he can switch to the nightshift. Chicky’s wife recently died, and he hates sitting home alone at night, depressed; he’s hoping that the nightshift will give him more social interaction, something to keep him out of trouble, even if that interaction is primarily him holding the door for residents who aren’t always gracious about it.Visit Chris Pavone's website.
Olek is the Bohemia’s live-in superintendent, a hyper-competent guy who has messy Cyrillic tattoos that evoke prison, but no one has the nerve to ask him about it. The Bohemia has a large staff, with a lot of shifts of a lot of jobs to cover, and a population of residents who are very demanding; Olek’s job is not an easy one.
Page 69 a great microcosm of the book. The Doorman is an Upstairs-Downstairs story that takes place largely at the world-famous Bohemia Apartments, where all the residents are in the 1 percent, and some are billionaires, people whose lives are filled with fine-art collections and fundraising galas, weekend houses and private schools, but also midlife crises and extramarital affairs and deep despair. Downstairs, all the working-class guys are Hispanic and Black, leading very different lives, facing very different problems—but also many of the same exact problems. The Doorman is about what happens at the intersection of these of lives, and page 69 is a great example of the downstairs world, and how it does and doesn’t interact with upstairs.
What’s more: Olek’s stick-and-pokes (“Ukrainian prison, Russian prison, who knew”) and Chicky’s nights at home (“all the trouble that a guy could find, especially a lonely single guy who didn’t have much to look forward to”) both help build the air of menace that thickens over the course of the narrative. It’s clear from the book’s opening sentence that someone is going to die in this story. The reader’s journey is to discover who, and when, and where, and how, and, most interestingly, why.
As for the novel as a whole, from The New York Times:Pavone is the author of five previous books, literary thrillers characterized by elegant writing and intricate plotting. This is something bigger in tone and ambition. While a mystery hums beneath the narrative — who won’t make it out of the book alive? — “The Doorman” is better read as a state-of-the-city novel, a kaleidoscopic portrait of New York at a singularly strange moment...I think this review did a great job of explaining the book.
With its laser-sharp satire, its delicious set pieces in both rich and poor neighborhoods — a co-op board meeting, a Harlem food pantry and more — and its portrait of a restive city torn apart by inequality, resentment and excess, “The Doorman” naturally invites comparison to “The Bonfire of the Vanities,” Tom Wolfe’s lacerating dissection of New York in the 1980s . . . But Pavone’s humor is more humane, his sympathy for the characters’ struggles and contradictions more acute. With his eye for absurdity and ear for nuance, he seems as if he’s writing not from some elevated place high above the city, but from within it.
See: Chris Pavone: five books that changed me.
Coffee with a Canine: Chris Pavone & Charlie Brown.
The Page 69 Test: The Expats.
The Page 69 Test: The Accident.
The Page 69 Test: The Travelers.
The Page 69 Test: The Paris Diversion.
The Page 69 Test: Two Nights in Lisbon.
--Marshal Zeringue
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