Elevator Pitch

Tense, twisty, and scary! Tall buildings and elevators make me nervous to begin with, so this book only made my phobias worse…eek! ;-) In the latest thriller from Linwood Barclay, the whole of New York City is at the mercy of a terrorist sabotaging elevators. Are the buildings being targeted randomly? Who is behind the attacks and why? Two police detectives and a journalist rush to put the pieces together before another elevator disaster kills more innocent people. Elevator Pitch is an intense and entertaining read. Fantastic follow up to A Noise Downstairs.

Someone is sabotaging elevators in New York high rise buildings and the chase is on to identify the who and the why and stop them before things get worse. The plot here is very simple and has almost no real twists. This is a character-driven thriller rather than a story-driven one.

The half-dozen or so key characters are revealed to us in increasing depth and complexity as the story unfolds. Good people have shameful secrets or become bad actors, and bad people become good. No one is without some secret or trait, good or bad, that they do not want revealed. Barclay is very good at drip-feeding this information to us in a way that keeps us off balance and never quite sure who the killer is or what is motivating them.

The denouement is show more refreshingly swift. Once we know whodunnit the story is wrapped up in 20 pages or so. I hate stories that have an extended will-they/won’t-they ending that tries to ramp up the suspense over pages and pages.

Barclay is not going to win any literary prizes (none of his main characters are gay or transgender) but you will have to go a long way to find something more entertaining. show less

Elevator Pitch by Linwood Barclay is a 2019 William Morrow publication.

One piece of advice…

Take the stairs!

It has become increasingly obvious that someone is sabotaging elevators in New York City. This goes as well as one might expect. The mayor has no idea what to do, the press is making all manner of wild conjectures and elevator engineers are working to figure out the schematics of the attacks, while a group calling themselves ‘The Flyovers’ are the prime suspects behind the tragedies, which might also include a spate of bombings.

The question is:

Is it safe to ride the elevator in the country's most vertical city?

This novel is tense, suspenseful, but also caustically funny at times.

Barclay nails the reactions of show more politicians, the press, and talking heads perfectly. I laughed out loud several times as the author depicted the 24 hour news channels and the various conspiracy theories that immediately sprang to life. He also eerily predicted how people would respond to a crisis, should something like this really happen.

The story profiles the life of Barbara, a journalist who frequently targets the mayor, who is hoping to expand his political career further, and her daughter, with whom she has a complicated relationship.

We also follow a pair of detectives- one of whom is suffering from extreme anxiety, and a member of the ‘Flyovers’, and of course the inner workings of the mayor’s office as they slowly realize they have a genuine disaster on their hands…

I really enjoyed the way the author managed the rather large cast of characters, weaving the threads together perfectly. The feeling of dread steadily increases as the reader begins to realize the story is barreling towards a huge finale and some of our favorite people could be in danger.

Overall, this is a solid, well-executed thriller. I was engaged from beginning to end and thought the author did a really good job with this one!

4 stars show less

In ELEVATOR PITCH, by Linwood Barclay, a deadly elevator accident in New York happens on Monday, but when another elevator accident happens on Tuesday, it starts to feel like these accidents aren't accidents as all. Can two detectives, a journalist, and the mayor's office each in their own way figure out who is doing this and why and stop it from continuing before more deaths and mass hysteria overcome the city.
From the first chapter describing the first elevator accident, Barclay creates tension that looms and slowly grows throughout the book until the very end. The pacing flows evenly and Barclay creates a fascinating group of characters and develops them well. He doles out morsels of valuable information about each major player, show more without it feeling like the story needs to stop for exposition before continuing. The gruesomeness of the deaths throughout the book walk the line of being intense enough to make the reader feel it without needless details that is sometimes thrown in simply to shock the reader. As the plot grows to the climatic conclusion, Barclay throws in some good twists and surprises. I didn't see the ending coming, even though looking back, Barclay does sneak in a few entertaining clues along the way.
An exciting thriller, Linwood Barclay's ELEVATOR PTICH is well crafted and compelling and I enjoyed it immensely.
I received this book as part of the Goodreads Giveaway program. show less

Elevator Pitch by Linwood Barclay raises the terrifying prospect of what would happen in the world's most vertical city if somebody were tampering with the elevators. When the first accident happens on Monday in Manhattan no one thinks much about it. When it happens again on Tuesday, people begin to worry. When another elevator crashes on Wednesday, the city is on the verge of panic.

Who is behind these tragedies and what does it have to do with a fingerless body found on the High Line? Two New York City detectives are working on the murder when they discover a connection to the elevator tragedies. Meanwhile, the mayor is desperate to see the crime solved before the scheduled Thursday opening of the city's newest, tallest residential show more tower, which happens to be owned by one of his biggest campaign contributors. A dogged reporter who has the mayor in her sights is also intent on finding out the cause of the tragedy to which she has a personal connection. Intersecting story lines, complicated characters whose motives are never entirely what they seem, and a ticking-clock plot make this one of the best thrillers of the year.

Much like he did in the Promise Falls trilogy, Barclay populates this novel with a large cast of characters whom he sets on intersecting agendas. What Barclay does maybe better than anyone else is give credible motives for all of the characters in his books. Even the characters who do despicable things have believable motivations behind their actions. Hand-in-hand with these complicated motivations, he scatters enough information to make more than one person plausible as the perpetrator. Barclay doles out the facts slowly over the course of the book until you have enough information to finally reveal the person behind the tragedies.

Strong characters who are well fleshed out, thrilling plot and a ticking clock that keeps you moving towards the conclusion make the pages fly by in this outstanding thriller. Barclay excels not only at describing horrific acts but in logically imagining both the practical and the political fallout from these incidents.

Elevator Pitch is a great stand-alone novel for any fans of thrillers and will be sure to please Barclay fans, especially fans of The Promise Falls trilogy. Highly recommended.

I was provided a copy of this book by the publisher. show less

Well, this should probably have been much more fun than it was.

It's got a great hook: someone taking over elevators in Manhattan and using them to kill people for reasons unknown. It has an easy to dislike and even easier to believe in Mayor of New York, a hard-bitten reported who has dedicated herself to showing people the kind of man the Mayor is. A detective suffering from PTSD after a shooting incident. Turbulent relationships between the Mayor and his son and the reporter and her daughter. A domestic terrorist group called 'The Flyovers' who are making war on 'the coastal elite' in the name of 'the real America'. And it has that 'this feels real' tone that comes from being written by someone who spent a long time as a reporter in show more New York City.

There were parts of it that I really enjoyed. Much of it was tense. There were a lot of surprises both about the main characters and what the author was willing to do to them but all of them made sense in retrospect. There were some funny lines and acute observations and there was never a point when I lost my desire to know what happened next and understand how the various threads of the story, past and present would be woven together.

But...

...the tone of the book was all over the place, lurching from thriller to cop show to maudlin Hallmark Moment sentimentality. I was constantly aware of the author's presence as he tried to press my buttons, ranging from 'Don't look there - look here' through to 'This will make 'em cry.' As we got further into the 'nasty things you can do with elevators' scenes, I felt the author was teasing me. Playing cat and mouse with me as the mouse and the game being 'You didn't see that coming, didya?'

OK, it's a thriller. All thrillers hustle our hearts and push up our anxiety. But I don't like to see my strings as they're being pulled.

This was my first Linwood Barclay book and will be my last. That being said, this would make great television.

I listened to the audiobook version which is delivered with style by Jonathan McClain. Click on the SoundCloud link below to hear a sample.


https://soundcloud.com/harpercollinspublishers/elevator-pitch-by-linwood-1 show less

I bought a copy of Elevator Pitch with only a basic idea of the premise, but with the online buzz (and Stephen King's kudos) I thought it was a safe bet for this avid suspense reader.

The book starts off with a bang … or a terrifying splat (to be more accurate) and things take off from there. I was riveted to the pages as New York, a city of 70,000 elevators, becomes targeted by someone manipulating elevators resulting in several deaths and widespread mayhem.

I've always been drawn to Barclay's style of writing. I enjoy how he gives even his most tertiary characters a wee bit of backstory that helps me to connect with them. From the cops to the journalist to the mayor and even some of the victims, readers get a well-rounded view of show more things. 4 1/2 stars! show less