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The Fifth Floor
by Michael Harvey
Product Group: Book
Publisher: Knopf (2008-08-26)
ISBN: 0307266877
EAN: 9780307266873
Dewey Decimal #: 813.6
Binding/Media: Hardcover - 288 pages
Edition: 1
Release Date: 2008-08-26
SKU: S6-GQCD-854D
Condition: Very Good
Comments: Dust jacket is clean and attractive. The first few pages have slight creasing, but remaining pages are clean and unmarked.
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Editorial Reviews
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Product Description
Michael Harvey’s sizzling follow-up to The Chicago Way (“A wonderful first novel . . . Harvey has studied the masters and put his own unique touch on the crime novel . . . Heralds the arrival of a major new voice” —Michael Connelly) opens with a murder in contemporary Chicago and winds its way back to Mrs. O’Leary’s cow and the Great Chicago Fire of 1871.
Private investigator Michael Kelly, the Windy City’s answer to Philip Marlowe, is back in another page-turner that revives a tantalizing mystery buried in Chicago’s past. When Kelly is hired by an old girlfriend to tail her abusive husband, he expects trouble of a domestic rather than a historical nature. Life, however, is not so simple. The trail leads Kelly to an old house on Chicago’s North Side. Inside it, he finds a body, and perhaps the answer to one of Chicago’s most enduring mysteries: who started the Great Chicago Fire and why. The ensuing investigation takes Kelly to places he’d rather not go: specifically, City Hall’s fabled fifth floor, where the mayor is feeling the heat. Kelly becomes embroiled in a scam that stretches from current politics back to the night Chicago burned to the ground, and along the way, he finds himself framed for murder, before finally facing a killer bent on rewriting history.
The Fifth Floor is fast-stepping, intricately woven suspense, rich with the lore and atmosphere of a great city. A marvelous successor to Harvey’s critically acclaimed debut.
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Customer Reviews
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Michael Harvey's Second PI Michael Kelly Chicago Murder Thriller
Rating  (4)
Date: 2010-08-22
3 out of 3 customers found this reveiw helpful
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.
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Solid detective novel
Rating (4)
Date: 2010-07-09
Overall a good book. Kept me entertained on a 6 hour flight. The story moved along well with a few interesting turns. Could it have been deeper... sure. Could it have been more gritty... I suppose. A lot of the reviewers seem to be comparing this book to old gritty crime novels of decades ago. If that's what you are looking for, this might not be for you. You will easily notice the things that are missing, and lose focus on what's good about this book. However, if you are looking for a decent detective novel that's easy to read then pick up a copy.
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Enjoyable, fast-paced crime novel worthy of your time...
Rating (4)
Date: 2010-03-01
This was a good, quick read. Michael Harvey's second mystery-ish novel featuring PI Michael Kelly wasn't quite as good as the first, "The Chicago Way," but it definitely kept me guessing. I really do enjoy Kelly's character. As someone told him in this book, "you don't give a s--t who you piss off," and that's a trait I try to live by myself, so I like it in my protagonists as well!
Kelly's former girlfriend asks him for help with her abusive husband, who happens to be one of the Chicago mayor's "fixers." In doing her this favor, he becomes embroiled in another murder, not to mention political pressure and a great deal of wrangling over who really did start the Great Chicago Fire of 1871. (Yes, I'm serious.)
If I had any issue with this book, it's that there was a lot crammed into it that I needed to keep straight, because suddenly things would happen with characters I'd already forgotten. And the story's conclusion was a little too pat for me, one I've seen at least a few times before. But that being said, I'll definitely look for Harvey's next book.
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The fifth floor
Rating  (5)
Date: 2009-11-19
Captivating from beginning to end. Particularly for us who live in Chicago. Great work, looking forward to new production.
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Great writing/Great Modern Noir
Rating (5)
Date: 2009-10-30
This is modern noir as literature. Great plot. Great characters. It's a page turner that gives you a little bit of history and a lot of great writing. I can't recommend this one highly enough.
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