The Fifth Floor

A Michael Kelley Novel

By: Michael Harvey

Narrated by: Stephen Hoye

Length: 7 hrs and 56 mins

Publisher's summary

Michael Harvey’s sizzling follow-up to The Chicago Way [“A magnificent debut that should be read by all” (John Grisham); “This book 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.

When PI Michael Kelly is hired by an ex-flame to tail her abusive husband, he expects trouble of a domestic rather than a historical nature. Life, however, is not so simple. The tail leads Kelly to an old house on Chicago's North Side. Inside it, the private investigator 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 fifth floor, where the mayor is feeling the heat and looking to play for keeps. Ultimately, Kelly finds himself in a world where nothing is quite what it seems, face-to-face with a killer bent on rewriting history and staring down demons from a past he never knew he had.

A fast-stepping, intricately woven narrative, rich with the history and atmosphere of a great city, The Fifth Floor is a worthy successor to Harvey's critically acclaimed debut.

©2008 Michael Harvey (P)2008 Random House, Inc.

Critic reviews

“In The Fifth Floor, Michael Harvey gives us a tale of murder, bare-knuckle mayoral politics, and historical catastrophe - in short, the perfect Chicago detective story, complete with a loving tour of the city’s funkier locales that’ll make any displaced Chicagoan long for home.” (Erik Larson, author of The Devil In the White City)

“Harvey’s superb second thriller . . . Harvey’s plot twists in all the right places, and his noir-inspired dialogue crackles without sounding showy. Marlowe and Spade would readily welcome Michael Kelly into their fold.” (Publishers Weekly, starred review)

“PI Michael Kelly digs into the history of the Great Chicago Fire for his second case in what’s shaping up as a strong series. . . . Dry wit, delectable clues and tricky leads hallmark this trenchant tale of the Windy City.” (Kirkus Reviews, starred review)

A drastic downturn from the first book

The story starts by veering into the improbable, then slides into inane. The noir tropes that worked so well in the previous book just don't mesh well. I want to say that Harvey's history isn't good enough, but there's too many scenes that just are on the verge of laughable in terms of believability. Now, a little of that fits in the genre, but the storm of it just doesn't stop. Still, the narration is top notch.