Chris Pavone’s ‘The Doorman’ ushers in look at money & class in America

In his new thriller The Doorman MCD bestselling author Chris Pavone The Expats Two Nights in Lisbon dives into the dark heart of upper and lower class Manhattan where everyone has secrets and death is just a kiss or a bullet away The Bohemia a legendary luxurious Central Park West residence is where a doorman is reliably on duty Where bad things may be not around the corner but at the front door With its expansive scale satiric thrusts and insider s awareness The Doorman is being favorably compared to Tom Wolfe s landmark Bonfire of the Vanities That was fairly deliberate Pavone pronounced Pah-VO-nay announced in a phone interview Bonfire was a spectacular book very much of its moment and that moment was four decades ago It addressed a lot of the most of critical themes about New York which are also the majority of key themes about America Race and racism class and income inequality money ambition and crime I yearned to write a book that addressed all of those very New York and very American themes But from a more contemporary sensibility situating it at a landmark residence on Central Park West That location makes sense the Brooklyn-born author explained Because I live in one of those buildings That in fact is what inspired the setting when we moved into a fancy full-service building about a half decade ago It was the first time in my life I d ever lived in this type of climate I hadn t really thought about it when we decided to move uptown Our main considerations were that it was a nice building in a nice part of town that was closer to my kids then-school and my wife s then-office But I never gave any thought to the institution aspect of it and the subservience part of that It directly made me uncomfortable that I now lived in a place where the people who work there called me Sir I dealt with that discomfort by spending a lot of time talking to the guys who work there especially a daytime doorman named Johnny who worked at the building for years It s the only job he ever had He had a type of warmth you could feel from across the street people who moved away from the building would come back just to visit Johnny Then Johnny got sick and for the next two years he carried bags and he held cabs while also definitely dying And he worked until just barely hours before he died Johnny broke my heart And this relationship broke my heart too That was the impetus for writing the book Both the building itself and Johnny