A deranged young man shot John Lennon to death outside the front door in 1980. The Beatle and his wife Yoko Ono were living there in the co-op apartment building called The Dakota. They were not the first, or the last, of the world-famous people who had made the Dakota home. For example, Lauren Bacall, Judy Garland, and Leonard Bernstein all had homes there. It’s now a National Historical Landmark. But the boldfaced names have long since been pushed aside by billionaires for whom the building is a pied-à-terre, just one of numerous homes. And in The Doorman, Chris Pavone writes about a similar co-op building called The Bohemia. Billionaires live there. It’s the setting for his latest thriller, and it may be his best book to date.
A propulsive story about four people whose lives intersect in murder
The eponymous doorman is Chicky Diaz, a 51-year-old Puerto Rican ex-Marine with the wrong kind of family connections. He’s a widower saddled with 200 grand in medical bills from the protracted bout of cancer that killed his wife. Not to mention other debts that push the total to 300 grand. He’s about to be evicted from his rented room.
Chicky’s been manning the front door of the Bohemia since what seems like forever. He’s popular with most of the residents except for a few for whom nobody is popular.
But Chicky is just one of several central characters in this propulsive thriller. The others are residents, chiefly Julian Sonnenberg in 2-A and Emily and Whitaker Hamilton Longworth in 11-C-D.
Sonnenberg has one of the cheapest apartments in the building. Longworth’s cost him $32 million plus $7 million to renovate its 7,000 square feet. Other billionaires live there, but he’s the richest.
Sonnenberg is a partner with a gay Black guy named Ellington in a struggling downtown art gallery. He’s a liberal. Longworth is a notorious billionaire arms dealer, and an outspoken reactionary Republican. His second wife is a gorgeous much younger blonde with an MFA. Her face and figure and designer clothing are splashed all over the society pages. But don’t expect stereotypes when you encounter these people. Every one of them is finely drawn, fully fleshed, and credible. And the story of their interactions is so suspenseful that it literally kept me up at night.
The Doorman by Chris Pavone (2025) 402 pages ★★★★★
Troubling complications link the principals
Among the complications in the relations among the four central characters are these:
- Whit Longworth is threatening to sue Julian Sonnenberg who had purchased a multimillion-dollar painting for him despite warning the man that its provenance was questionable. But there’s been bad blood between the two ever since Whit and Emily bought 11-C-D. The co-op board had turned down Whit’s first renovation plan, and Julian was the board chair.
- Emily Longworth had known Julian in art school. He was one of her professors. And he’d been desperately in love with her from a distance ever since. When he sees her in the lobby of the Bohemia he’s often struck speechless.
- Both Whit and Emily are thinking about whether to file for divorce. Each thinks the other is having an affair.
- Chicky is polite and helpful to all the residents, but a few of them are nasty to him nonetheless. The worst of those is Whit Longworth—while Emily is the opposite, treating Chicky as an equal.
Meanwhile, Chicky’s life outside the Bohemia is unraveling. Because of the debts he carries for his late wife’s medical care, he’s taken money from a loan shark and a job moonlighting as a bouncer in his cousin’s dive bar. And there he made the mistake of trying to toss out a violent drug dealer known as “The Fist” who was tormenting the waitresses. This does not bode well for Chicky’s life expectancy. Nor does the Fist’s threat to use him as a way in to rob the Bohemia.
Review of this book by Claude-AI
I asked the chatbot for a 500-word review. It delivered the following 524-word text:
Chris Pavone’s latest thriller, The Doorman, represents a bold evolution for the bestselling author, trading the international espionage settings of his previous works for the equally treacherous terrain of Manhattan’s upper crust. Set in the prestigious Bohemia Apartments, this novel masterfully weaves together social satire and white-knuckle suspense into what critics have aptly described as “Bonfire of the Vanities” meets “Die Hard.”
At the heart of the story is Chicky Diaz, everyone’s favorite doorman at the Bohemia, an ex-Marine who has been working at the prestigious apartment building for 28 years. What makes Chicky such a compelling protagonist is his position as both insider and outsider—invisible to the wealthy residents he serves, yet privy to their darkest secrets. He is “relentlessly upbeat,” never breaks rules, never bad-mouths anyone, making him the perfect observer of Manhattan’s elite dysfunction.
A diverse ensemble cast
The novel’s strength lies in its diverse ensemble cast, each representing different facets of New York society. Up in the penthouse, Emily Longworth seems to have the perfect everything, all except her husband, whom she’d quietly loathed even before the recent revelations about where the money comes from. 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. This stratified world becomes a festering marriage, an ill-fated affair, and a business relationship gone sour, all of which combine to trap the ‘unerringly patient and unfailingly nice’ doorman in a cataclysm.
Pavone demonstrates remarkable skill in balancing multiple narrative threads while maintaining breakneck pacing. Pavone delivers a strong story and provides the reader with a great reading experience that does not lose its momentum at any point. The author’s background in crafting international thrillers serves him well here, as he applies the same attention to plot mechanics and character development to this distinctly American setting.
A state-of-the-city novel
What elevates The Doorman beyond mere entertainment is its incisive social commentary. 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. The novel doesn’t shy away from contemporary issues of race, class, and social justice, examining them through the lens of a building that serves as a microcosm of American inequality.
The character of Chicky Diaz serves as both the novel’s moral center and its most fascinating creation. While he is dismissed by many he greets and expected to remain invisible, his job as the doorman at one of the most exclusive New York City apartments serves him well. His position allows him to become an unlikely hero, using his insider knowledge and observational skills when crisis strikes.
The Doorman succeeds brilliantly as both a page-turning thriller and a sharp-eyed social satire. Pavone has created a novel that feels both timely and timeless, capturing the absurdities and tensions of contemporary New York while delivering the kind of suspenseful entertainment that makes his books so addictive. For readers seeking intelligent escapism with substance, this latest offering from Chris Pavone delivers in spades.
Accompanying the text of this review was Claude’s commentary:
I’ve written a comprehensive 500-word review of “The Doorman” by Chris Pavone. The review draws on critical reception and plot details to provide an analysis of the novel’s strengths, including its compelling protagonist Chicky Diaz, its skillful balance of thriller elements with social commentary, and its insightful portrayal of contemporary Manhattan society.
The review highlights how Pavone follows the formula in his excellent new novel, The Doorman. It is (sweeping hand gesture) “Bonfire of the Vanities” meets “Die Hard.” The Doorman by Chris Pavone — Open Letters Review The novel centers on Chicky Diaz is everyone’s favorite doorman at the Bohemia, the most famous apartment house in the world, home of celebrities, financiers, and New York’s cultural elite. The Doorman | CHRIS PAVONE
The review emphasizes both the entertainment value and the deeper social themes that make this thriller particularly resonant for contemporary readers.
I don’t know about you, but I’m impressed. There are no “hallucinations” here, just reasoned, in-depth criticism.
About the author
Chris Pavone‘s first novel, The Expats, won both the Edgar and Anthony Awards and was a New York Times bestseller. He has written five more international thrillers since 2012, when The Expats was published. Pavone grew up in Brooklyn, graduated from Cornell University, and worked in publishing for nearly two decades at a series of companies. He and his wife lived in Luxembourg for a time, where he wrote his first novel. They have twin boys. The couple lives in New York City in an apartment building similar to the Bohemia of The Doorman.
For related reading
Previously I’ve reviewed four of Chris Pavone’s other five novels:
- The Expats (A truly suspenseful novel about cyber theft)
- The Accident (Rogue spies on the loose)
- The Travelers (A clever spy story that will keep you guessing)
- The Paris Diversion (The CIA, a crumbling marriage, and terrorist threats in Paris)
For a superb review of this book by Sarah Lyall of the New York Times, see “Murder, Lust and Obscene Wealth in a City on Edge” (July 13, 2025).
You might also enjoy my posts 26 mysteries to keep you reading at night and 20 excellent standalone mysteries and thrillers.
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