Customer Reviews

The Fifth Floor (Vintage Crime/Black Lizard)

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(0)
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In Harvey's second Chicago noir, ex-cop and private investigator Michael Kelly finds himself knee deep in a scandal that goes all the way back to the infamous Chicago Fire of 1871, and its possible origin as an attempt by two powerful families to eliminate the city's Irish immigrants by burning down the slums. While on a surveillance case tailing an ex-girlfriend's abusive husband (who happens to be one of the mayor's personal hatchet men) in the hopes of discovering something she can use against him, Kelly stumbles upon a murder scene that reaches into Chicago's sordid past, with its money- and power-grabbing elite, and their connection to the city's long-running political machine. Seems that machine is still humming: after digging a little too deeply into the murder he uncovered, Kelly is summoned to City Hall's notorious fifth floor, where he is warned off the case by the mayor himself. Naturally Kelly is undeterred, and things get more complicated and dangerous, with more bodies turning up and an attempted frame-up of Kelly for the crimes. P.I. Michael Kelly is a wonderfully flawed but honorable character created by a talented noir stylist, and his tenacious efforts to expose the wrongdoings of Chicago's most ruthlessly powerful and respected citizens keep you rooting for the this appealing underdog. Extra points for the colorful hardboiled dialogue.
Also recommended: A Stranger Lies There- a superior desert-noir set in Palm Springs, it won the Malice Domestic Award for best first mystery.

Knew I'd like The Fifth Floor after reading the opening quote which is from columnist Mike Royko in reference to Chicago: "This town was built by great men who demanded that drunkards and harlots be arrested, while charging them rent until the cops arrived."

Yes, of all American cities there is a special mystique about Chicago with its gangland murders, wealthy suburbs, and an impression that anything goes in that Windy City by the Lake. Wonder how many movies have been shot there with closeups of the city's bars, streets, and hangouts. Tell you what - cinematography has a way to go to top Michael Harvey who draws such concise, punchy word pictures of his town that we can almost slip on a "greasy set of steps, ", catch a whiff of a woman's fragrance or recoil at the sight of a dead man whose mouth is overstuffed with sand. This author ensnares readers with his words.

The Fifth Floor follows Michael Harvey's successful The Chicago Way, continuing the adventures of private detective Michael Kelly who has a penchant for trouble; he's a guy who barely makes it through each week intact.

Kelly's former girlfriend, Janet, has come to him for help. She's a lovely woman but that's a bit hard to tell with the bruises covering her face. It seems her husband, Johnny Woods, has used her to work of some steam and she has no idea why. When she refuses to leave her abusive spouse Kelly agrees to try to talk to him. But first he does a little investigating via a good friend, a Pulitzer Prize winning reporter, who tutors him re the way Chicago works on the mayoral level. Mayor's offices are located on the fifth floor of City Hall.

Seems that Woods is a "fixer" for the Mayor - does whatever needs to be done to keep things running smoothly and looking clean. As Kelly digs deeper he finds that much of the dirty work going on today has links to the past, to the Chicago fire in 1871. It soon becomes apparent that the Mayor's family may have been involved in less than respectable ways.

Well, we know what happens to people who find out too much and that's the predicament Kelly finds himself in. Who knows, some may decide that if he were convicted of murder that might just put Kelly out of the way.

Michael Harvey is a superb writer reminding one of the best of the earlier noir stories. He carries us along to a well plotted denouement and since he laces the ride with both humor and grit we thoroughly enjoy every minute of it.

- Gail Cooke

Michael Harvey's second fictional thriller, The Fifth Floor staring former cop turned Private Investigator Michael Kelly is set in Chicago in 2008.

Kelly's former girl friend Janet is married to her second husband, Johnny "the fixer" Woods--a wife beater--working at the City Hall/Cook County Building for "The Fifth Floor" office of Chicago Mayor John J. Wilson.

Janet hires Mike to investigate and document her husband abuse. It had reached a stage where Johnny's 14 year old step-daughter, wants Kelly to kill him.

Michael Kelly understands abuse having grown up with a cowardly drunken father who beat him and his older brother, Phillip daily until they grew up. Like Taylor, he would have like to see his father dead.

Observing Woods enter and quickly leave the Bellinger Cottage at 2121 North Hudson with his face white from fear, Kelly enters the building and discovers the dead body of amateur historian, 75-year-old Allen Bryant, great-great-grandson of the home's original occupant, police officer, Richard Bellinger, who saved the building from the Chicago Fire in October of 1871.

From that point on the story takes the reader on a roller coaster ride full of twists and turns through the origins of "a gang of thieves, also known as Chicago's founding fathers," dirty tricks, patronage politics, graft and murder.

The author spends a great deal of time presenting a variety of alternative theories to O'Leary's cow as the cause of the Great Chicago fire. One theory presented on April 1, 1978 by Sun-Times reporter, Rawling "Smitty" Smith as an April Fools article landed him in jail after police stopped him claiming he was drunk while planting drugs and a gun in his car and forcing him to make a deal with then prosecutor, now District Attorney Gerald O'Leary in exchange for not charging him with armed robbery and rape based on the photo lineup testimony of a hooker. The deal was that "Smitty" resign and leave town. The results were that he was black balled from all major newspaper reporting and his wife of over 10-years divorced him and took his two children while he ended up reporting in for a small newspaper in Joliet, Illinois where he is thankful to be alive and sips warm beers from his desk drawer to keep him going.

Michael Harvey is an excellent story teller with superb writing skills that keeps the reader rapidly flipping pages from beginning to the end of his Chicago Thrillers. I enjoyed this novel almost as much as I did his debut novel, The Chicago Way and his latest one, The Third Rail.

I think that most readers that enjoy a descriptive fast paced thriller will be happy to read this book.

I'll leave plot reviews to other folks. The main thing I think readers should know is that while the writing is excellent and the pacing is fantastic, this novel does contain references to child abuse. I love to read - a lot - but I hate being half way through a book and hitting a point where something bad happens to a child or there is sexual violence. Its not my thing and if its severe - the book goes. IMMEDIATELY. I know I'm not the only one and so I like to make sure people know before they get involved. It's handled well here, but I would have liked to have know in advance. Still, its a great novel with well developed characters and a solid plot that doesn't fall apart in the end with a trite contrived ending.

With his second novel, "The Fifth Floor", following last year's "The Chicago Way", Michael Harvey has cemented his position as one of my "must read" authors in the urban noir genre. His style is infectious and spell-binding. His prose flows like a movie screen play and his sense of pacing and plotting is unassailable. As I said in my previous review of his work, his ability to paint vivid word pictures, especially of Chicago and its environs, makes me feel I have been there (which I haven't) and that I would recognize it when I someday see it.

This time around, Michael Kelly, former cop and current PI, is engaged in a domestic case involving an old girl friend who is being abused by her husband, Johnny Woods, a "fixer" for the mayor whose offices are located on "The Fifth Floor". After tailing Woods to a house where he discovers a homicide, Kelly soon discovers that a simple domestic violence case has morphed into a murder case that may involve a conspiracy of greed and power that can be traced all the way back to the Great Chicago Fire of 1871.

Kelly's investigation soon leads to more bodies, more crimes, the greed and corruption of the Chicago mayor's office, and even an impending mayoral election. Kelly works with local character types that are well fashioned by his spot-on characterizations, such as Fred Jacobs, a pulitizer prize winning columnist, Vince Rodriquez and Dan Masters, police colleagues who use Kelly as a stalking horse to investigate the mayor's office, and an assortment of street characters, bartenders, and cab drivers. His dialogue is lively, believable, and never out of sync.

Kelly is a gumshoe clearly in a class with the Marlowe/Spade protagonists of old. He misses few clues and can make prophetic analytical leaps in his investigations. While he can be considered hard boiled, he is also somewhat of a renaissance man who reads and quotes Latin poetry and ancient philosophers. This is a highly recommended read as is "The Chicago Way" if you have not yet had the pleasure.

Harvey is a very good writer and has hit on a gold mine by bringing quality, modern urban noir to a Chicago setting. I loved how he used the Chicago Fire as the foundation for this book. He also plays with motive: can maintaining a good name be worth taking someone else's life? I love Pelecanos in part because I know DC well and have been looking for someone else to read in that vein. Harvey is the ticket. Now all I need to do is pick up his first book and head back to Gibson's on Rush St. for one of their amazing martinis...

This is not a "profound" work BUT it held my interest. I read it in just a few hours.

In Michael Harvey's second story featuring tough Chicago P. I. Michael Kelly, the reader is treated to a page-turning yarn that oozes the intrigues of Chicago. Mayoral politics, rugged cops, sleazy journalists and tarnished heroes share their dirty little secrets in a world where people go along only when it suits their own self interest. Harvey's writing captures a mood that will transcend the strength of the plot, and his characters are as gritty as you will find in today's fiction. The Fifth Floor is an improvement in style as well as a refinement of the characters introduced by Harvey's excellent debut novel, The Chicago Way. If this book is any indication, Harvey is getting better and we will be treated to more Michael Keely books in the near future.

I'm not a fan of crime novels, but I *AM* a fan of historical context, so when I read the book's synopsis, I simply had to check it out. Consequently, I read "The Fifth Floor" before reading "The Chicago Way." Though Harvey's first book introduces the characters, I nonetheless had no difficulty assessing the characters in "The Fifth Floor." It can stand by itself. I found the story so well-crafted that I, myself, began to question whether Mrs. O'Leary's cow started the fire. And I liked the tipping of the hat to current Chicago and presidential politics. When Harvey wrote that there was an Illinois' Senatorial position opening up next year - predicting an Obama win - it was so natural and so contemporary. Like I said, I'm no fan of crime novels, but I found myself to be a fan of Michael Harvey.

In Chicago, private investigator Michael Kelly is working a simple domestic violence case although he knows this one is personal. His former girlfriend Janet hires him to follow her abusive husband Johnny Woods, who works for the city's mayor as a fixer of potentially embarrassing problems. Michael wants to get Janet and her daughter Taylor to a safe house as he fears what Woods is capable of doing, but the woman warns him not to make it personal.

However, his surveillance quickly proves the case is much more complex when he finds a body inside an old house. As he digs into the murder he stumbled upon, Kelly begins to see connections back to the Great Chicago Fire of 1871 including a cover-up back then, but still in effect, involving two prominent wealthy families with the final solution of eradicating the undesirable Irish. Afterward he is forced to visit the infamous City Hall's Fifth Floor for a lecture by the mayor to back off or else. However, Kelly begins to feel like Mrs. O'Leary's cow when the modern day killer sets him up to take the fall for the corpse he found.

Still a frustrated Cubs fan and attracted to a judge he wants to call but never seems to, Michael is a terrific hardboiled private investigator who makes it to THE FIFTH FLOOR where he assumes is the wood shed for those embarrassing the powers. His second urban noir thriller (see THE CHICAGO WAY) is a superb whodunit that ties current Windy City activity to the 1871 inferno. The star investigates both even as he struggles to stay out of jail as a clever killer perfectly frames him reminding him about that cow held culpable by the myth (mindful of "Professor" Robert Wuhl's underlying assumption in "Assume the Position".

Harriet Klausner