Chris Pavone’s 2025 novel, The Doorman, is a social thriller that shifts from the international espionage of his previous works to the class and political tensions of contemporary New York City. Pavone, an Edgar Award-winning author known for bestsellers like The Expats (2012) and Two Nights in Lisbon (2022) sets this story within the confines of the Bohemia, a prestigious Central Park West apartment building. The narrative unfolds from the perspectives of three characters whose lives are on a collision course: Chicky Diaz, a veteran doorman drowning in debt; Emily Longworth, a wealthy resident trapped in a toxic marriage to a billionaire arms dealer; and Julian Sonnenberg, an art gallerist facing personal and professional crises. As a citywide protest against police brutality and economic inequality gathers, the building transforms from a sanctuary into a pressure cooker, exploring themes of The Corrosive Nature of Wealth and The Violence of Class Disparity.

The novel is set against the backdrop of a deeply polarized America, using its New York City setting as a microcosm for the nation’s cultural divides. The plot is anchored by real-world social conflicts, satirizing the anxieties of affluent liberal circles surrounding DEIB initiatives and curriculum debates while also referencing protests against police violence and the rise of right-wing violence. The Bohemia itself is located on the edge of Manhattan’s Billionaires’ Row, a real-life concentration of ultra-luxury skyscrapers that have become global symbols of extreme wealth inequality. This setting fuels the central conflict, illustrating The Impact of Political Polarization on Interpersonal Relationships as the characters navigate a volatile landscape where every interaction is charged with social and political meaning, and the divisions between the city’s ultra-rich and the service class who attend to them threaten to erupt into violence.

This guide refers to the 2025 MCD Farrar, Straus and Giroux first edition.

Content Warning: The source text and this guide contain depictions of graphic violence, death, racism, sexual harassment, sexual content, gender and sex discrimination, substance use, illness, emotional abuse, and death by suicide.

Plot Summary

Chicky Diaz is a doorman at the Bohemia, a prestigious Central Park West apartment building, where he has worked for 28 years. A 51-year-old widower and former Marine, Chicky is overwhelmed by medical debt from his late wife Tiffani’s cancer treatment and the cost of his three daughters’ college tuition. To cope with his loneliness and financial strain, he switches to the night shift and takes a second job as a bouncer for his cousin, Junior. Living in the Bohemia’s penthouse, 11C-D, is Emily Longworth, who feels trapped in a cold marriage to Whitaker “Whit” Longworth, the billionaire CEO of a defense contractor, Liberty Logistics. Emily secretly embezzles millions from their household accounts to create an escape fund and conducts a passionate affair with another resident, gallerist Julian Sonnenberg, in a private art studio she rents. Julian, who lives in apartment 2A, is also facing crises: His gallery is financially unstable, his marriage to his wife, Jennifer, is collapsing, and he has just learned from his doctor that a congenital heart defect requires imminent surgery. The city is tense, with protests planned in response to the police shooting of a Black man, and separate demonstrations targeting Whit Longworth’s company for selling body armor to foreign countries involved in unspecified conflicts.

Chicky’s life spirals when, at his bouncer job, he confronts a gangster named El Puño for sexually harassing waitresses. After a brief fight, Chicky is pressured by Junior to make amends. El Puño demands repayment for his associates’ bail and suggests Chicky help him rob the Bohemia. Feeling threatened, Chicky buys an illegal .44 magnum revolver for protection. Meanwhile, Emily witnesses a second police shooting in Harlem while volunteering at the New Hope food pantry. Though shaken, she chooses not to get involved. At the Bohemia, Julian’s co-op board meeting becomes a bitter debate over hiring armed guards for the protests, a measure Julian vehemently opposes. His personal and professional relationships with Whit also deteriorate over a disputed Rothko painting and Whit’s increasingly reactionary politics. The tensions within the building and the city are escalating, leading to a violent convergence.

On the night of the protests, Emily is accosted on Park Avenue by right-wing, white counterprotesters who mistake her Black bodyguard, DeMarquis, for a kidnapper. At the Bohemia, a team of six armed men invades the Bohemia. Their leader is Justin Pugh, Whit’s vengeful and extremist former business partner. The crew takes Chicky and his younger colleague, Canarius, hostage. They disable security cameras and force Chicky to use his master keys to access four wealthy residents’ apartments: the Van der Luydens’ (6C), the Maxwells’ (8D), Ethel Frumm’s (10C), and the Longworths’ (11C-D). They systematically rob the apartments, with Chicky forced to act as a lure. 

Simultaneously, Julian is walking home from the gala where his affair with Emily was nearly exposed to Jennifer. He witnesses the armed invasion of the Bohemia from across the street. With his phone dead, he alerts the building’s super, Oleksander “Olek” Ponomarenko, by throwing pebbles at his basement window. Olek, a secretive man with a military past, arms himself with a pistol, while Julian takes a wrench, and they decide to intervene.

Inside 11C-D, the robbers, led by Pugh, use Chicky as a human shield while they search for Whit. As Emily enters her apartment, Pugh takes her hostage and threatens to shoot her if Whit does not come out. Hearing her scream, Julian bursts through the front door, Pugh shoots and kills Julian, and Chicky shoots Pugh. Chicky is shot in the abdomen during the exchange. Olek appears from a hidden service entrance and is wounded by another robber. Whit emerges from his office, holding his own handgun and body armor. He reveals he knew about her affair and that Emily had secretly unloaded his weapon. Emily shoots her husband in the neck, and Chicky tells her how to get away with killing Whit. Emily executes Whit with a shot to the head.

Chicky instructs Emily to tell the police that Justin Pugh shot Whit during the robbery, then shot Julian, and then shot Chicky before Chicky killed Pugh in self-defense. In the aftermath, Chicky and Olek both survive their injuries. DeMarquis reveals to Emily that Whit hired him to follow her, but he destroys the dossier containing proof of her affair with Julian. Olek privately tells Chicky he witnessed the true sequence of events but will remain silent, repaying Chicky’s years of friendship. At Julian’s memorial, Emily admits she loved Julian to Jennifer. Emily uses her inherited fortune to pay off all of Chicky’s debts and gives him a check for $10 million from an offshore account, ensuring his silence and thanking him for saving her life. Chicky retires from the Bohemia, his future now financially secure but forever marked by the night of violence and the secrets he must keep.