Customer Reviews

Blackout

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Gianluca Morozzi has written a neat claustrophobic thriller set in the elevator of a residential building. In Black Out, three individuals, strangers to each other, enter the lift. Shortly thereafter, the power goes out and the trio is trapped between floors. Their back-stories are filled in between chapters that describe the continuously rising paranoia and terror within the cramped quarters of the lift. I'm not giving anything away when I say that one of the three is vicious serial killer, and his is the only background that is really relevant to the story. The other two could have been pilots or scuba-divers for all their lives had any consequence up to the point they are trapped. So far, so good. True to the genre, the innocents have to escape. How though? And is that all to the story? This is where Morozzi cranks up the unlikeliness factor, and the story - to my mind - degenerates to droll fantasy. It is written in that arch, self-consciously-talking-to-the-reader fashion that might grate on some; the staccato sentences might alienate others, but it is a thin book, trying a bit to be too clever, and will serve as a decent page-turner on a short trip to work.

This is one of the best mystery I've read for a long time. It's deliberate in pace and exciting in suspense. I highly recommend this book to anyone looking for a good book to read and to collect.

Everyone who can is escaping the summer heat of Bologna, Italy for the long August Bank Holiday weekend. Three people ride an elevator in a high rise apartment building in a city increasingly turning into a stone quarry as it empties of people. However, the elevator gets stuck trapping the trio inside between the eleventh and twelfth floor. In a somber greenish light that makes the BLACKOUT seem even eerier, the alarm fails and so does their mobiles. The two males struggle, but manage to open the door only to find a solid wall blocking the opening.

There is no place to go except to wait for help or the elevator to suddenly work. Claudia works as an exotic dancer to pay her bills while going to school. Teenage Tomas is meeting his girlfriend Francesca in Amsterdam; as they have planned to elope. Aldo owns a club, believes music died when Elvis died, and finds passion as a serial killer. As the elevator's heat rises to unbearable levels and increasingly hope for help coming soon diminishes to zero, the trapped threesome begin lose it as tempers ignite and sadistic interchanges occur.

Each of the trapped is a unique character with flaws that make them seen like real people spending unbearably heated time stuck in a closed environs with no hope for immediate rescue. The suspense grows as each becomes testier and angrier. Although an inane coda feels out of place and unnecessary, fans will enjoy this tense psychological suspense of three individuals sharing a horrific experience.

Harriet Klausner