After reading this brand new novel by American-Canadian writer Linwood Barclay, we will never see elevators the same way again!
• To read also: Between dream and awakening
To date, Linwood Barclay’s novels have sold nearly seven million copies worldwide. And his youngest, The vertigo of fear, is also likely to snowball. Or rather, to experience a meteoric rise! Because from the moment you start reading this thriller in which several people will die taking the elevator, it is almost impossible to take your eyes off it.
“I live in Toronto and one day, listening to the radio, I learned that with all the new high-rise buildings that had been built on the waterfront, there weren’t enough technicians left to maintenance of the elevators, specifies Linwood Barclay, who was able to be reached at his home at the beginning of the month. That’s when I thought to myself, “What if there was this guy killing people by sabotaging elevators?” I talked to my agent about it and she thought the idea was so good that she said I had to get to work right away! »
“Personally, I’m not afraid of elevators,” continues Linwood Barclay. But when I started writing The Vertigo of Fear, I quickly realized that this was not the case for everyone and that in fact many people were afraid to take the elevator, this fear being at the intersection of several phobias: fear of falling, fear of heights, fear of confined spaces, fear of crowded places, etc. You have to admit, what an incredible playground for a thriller writer!
Free fall
New York is the vertical city par excellence. After Hong Kong and Dubai, it is there that we can count the largest number of skyscrapers. And who says skyscrapers, necessarily says elevators. “That’s why the story could not take place elsewhere than in New York”, underlines in passing Linwood Barclay.
Then head to the Big Apple, where the tension will soon skyrocket: an elevator car from the Lansing Tower, on Third Avenue, will crash to the ground and kill four people. If it ended there, pass again. But the next day, in a residential tower located on York Avenue, a woman will lose her life in terrible conditions after being stuck between two floors. Rebelote the following day with new victims, this time at the Gormley Building on Seventh Avenue.
It will not take more to turn the whole city upside down and soon, Mayor Richard Headley will have to make a serious decision. Which we obviously won’t reveal here. However, one thing is certain: somewhere in this vast city that never sleeps, there is a malicious individual who takes pleasure in playing with the elevators and pressing all the buttons of fear!
Go back up the slope
To shed light on this very unusual affair, Linwood Barclay has created two characters who will experience many ups and downs. Barbara Matheson, journalist at Manhattan Today, will indeed have the very unpleasant surprise of knowing one of the victims personally. Which will give him an excellent reason to want to know more about the one who dared to attack his former trainee.
As for Jerry Bourque, the cop officially assigned to this investigation by the New York Police Department, we can say that he will have his hands full: in addition to this story of elevators, he will have to find the murderer of a man whose fingers have all been cut off and whose face has been reduced to a pulp. To establish your identity, hello! But if there was only that… For some time, Jerry seems to have more and more difficulty managing his asthma attacks which could be linked to a traumatic event from his past…
“Very early on, I had in mind this image of him where we see him dropping his inhaler when he is out of breath, explains Linwood Barclay. This is a scene that I really wanted to write and which probably comes to me from the Hitchcock film Vertigo when, towards the end, James Stewart fights his vertigo to climb to the top of a steeple. »
“Every time I write a new novel, I always hope it will be the best, he exclaims in conclusion. I want to give readers what they expect from one of my books, but never fall into the same kind of story. »
So ? Ready to get on the elevator with him?
