The book’s chapters follow events over several days, Monday to Friday. It opens with a man, Stuart Bland, who is a writer, and just wants to get some time with an entertainment executive to pitch his idea for a story. He follows her into an elevator as she’s going up to her office, figuring she couldn’t run away on the ride up. However, as the elevator goes up, it goes past everyone’s floor to the top and then goes down midway, halts and then goes into a free fall, killing all but one.
The protagonist of the story, a journalist named Barbara Matheson, works for a local paper, the Manhattan Today. She is dedicated to her profession, driven and has a daughter that was raised by her parents. Matheson arrives on the scene and recognizes the survivor as Paula Chatsworth, who interned at her paper a few years before. Matheson goes to the hospital with Chatsworth, who dies a short time later.
Because this accident happened in a high-rise building, with several people dying, questions would arise about elevator inspection and maintenance that the City’s Department of Buildings might have to answer for, which is why the Mayor, Richard Headley and his son Glover (who worked as his aid) also responded.
The same day, police detectives respond to the High Line (an old elevated train track that has been converted to a park), where a body, whose been disfigured and fingers cut off to hinder identification, was found. The body, later identified as Otto Petrenko, was an elevator technician.
Also, Garrett Wooker and Eugene Clement, from out of town meet to discuss a plan. Clement is leader of their group, the Flyovers, and has arrived in the city with his wife for their anniversary and to watch events unfold. The Flyovers believe that east and west coast elites have no respect for midwest, smalltown America.
The next day, Tuesday, there is another elevator accident in an apartment building. A Russian female scientist, named Fanta Petrov, is decapitated trying to get out of an elevator that’s stuck between floors, she climbs out but then the elevator suddenly starts moving as she reached back for her handbag (you should never climb out of an elevator and if you do and make it, don’t reach back – you don’t know why the elevator is stuck!). Inspecting the crime scene, investigators find a camera installed on the elevator roof to provide a view of inside the elevator car – this camera wasn’t building management property. Revisiting the elevator from the day before, that elevator also had an unauthorized camera on its roof.
They also found a small box, magnetically attached in the building’s equipment room, which could remotely control an elevator from a distance, once a person could override the building’s codes to interface with the elevator system. the person responsible would have to have to be someone with extensive knowledge of elevator operations. They questioned what was the motive behind this and if the death of the elevator technician was related.
Wooker and Clement of the Flyovers continue to meet periodically for Wooker to check in while incidents unfold. Clement’s wife however, has seen them together more than once and has become suspicious – Why did her husband really bring them to New York City?
Day three, Wednesday, a taxi cab explodes on a street just outside a hotel, killing two people on the street and the cabdriver. A few blocks away, in another hotel, a man and woman waiting for a elevator in the lobby stepped forward once the doors opened to an empty shaft and fell to the elevator pit just below the basement. They were injured but alive however, while the security guard above called for help, the elevator on the 2nd floor started to descend and crushed them both with the security guard frantically pushing the call button trying to stop it (Now, I don’t know about you guys, but I always look first before stepping on to an elevator – ALWAYS!).
After a mishandled press conference and the news prints that followed, the Mayor decided to call for all elevators in the city to be put out of service until they could be deemed safe. This decision in itself led to several deaths, being that NYC is a vertical city and getting up and down higher floors without an elevator could be fatal.
Barbara Matheson, conducting a background investigation online, found that all buildings involved so far had a connection to the Mayor’s major political supporters – either they lived in the building or had owning shares. Mayor Headley has several rich and well connected supporters. He also commends growing up with a critical, taskmaster father, who made him collect rents and act as ruthless building manager for the properties he owned. He believes this gave him the grit to climb the political ladder and thinks treating his son, Glover, in this same manner will also make him strong. As the story unfolds, his actions will come back to haunt him.
Wooker and Clement meet in a men’s bathroom in Clement’s hotel to discuss the progress of events. With the city’s heightened alerts and elevator shutdown, Clement wants to be safe and suspend activity in NYC and continue in another city to lower the risk of being discovered. Wooker does not agree and after Mrs. Clement follows them, entering the bathroom to confront them, Wooker shoots them both. Hearing their screams, Wooker is shot by an FBI agent who was following the Clements. After searching Wooker’s hotel room in New Jersey, there is evidence to connect him to the car bombing. Officials assume that on further investigation, they will also find evidence connecting Wooker and the Flyovers to the elevator incidents. They think the worst is over.
One of Mayor Headley’s backers has a long planned opening of a highrise building on Central Part North. The 98 story Top of the Park will be the tallest residential building in the Western Hemisphere. A reception is being held at the Obervation Level, top floor. All major players of the story are at the event, the Mayor and his son, Matheson and her daughter.
Detectives were also on their way up to the top to question the mayor’s son about his possible connection to the murdered elevator technician, when their elevator stopped around the 60th floor and wouldn’t move. When they got out, the elevator moved on with the doors still open and explosions sounded above.
Once guests were on the Observation Level and explosions sounded, they realized each stairwell had been bombed. Moments later all elevators sounded they were coming. The elevator doors opened to empty shafts. At this point it is revealed who is sabotaging the elevators and why. It is a person from the Mayor’s past and they want him to pay for his transgressions with his life.
There are several side stories in this novel: between the Mayor and his son, between the detectives, between Barbara Matheson and her daughter and between Mr. Clement and his wife, tying things together for the ending, which I did not disclose because I don’t want to spoil the ending for you. I learned of this title through the ebook find service, BookBub. You can discover great titles there at a discount (I mean for under $3.00!). Once I read the description, I knew I had to read this elevator highrise nightmare. I wasn’t disappointed. I sure hope you give Elevator Pitch a read!