The Fifth Floor

The Fifth Floor by Michael Harvey

The Fifth Floor is the second of Michael Harvey’s novels to feature private investigator Michael Kelly. After enjoying The Chicago Way, the first Michael Kelly novel, so much, I was in a hurry to pick up The Fifth Floor. I was highly disappointed.

This story is nowhere near as gritty as its predecessor. Not even close. Instead, Harvey tried to do something different this time around. In my opinion, he tried to do too much. Whereas the grittiness and rawness of The Chicago Way created emotional tension, Harvey tried the opposite approach in The Fifth Floor. This time, the story began with the emotional tension and the author tried to use that tension to great the story’s grit. It did not work.

The story begins with Kelly meeting with a physically abused woman in his office. From the very beginning, Kelly’s is drawn in by emotion. He took this case because of his emotions. The plot of the first novel revolved around a case that Kelly took because he was fighting for justice. That element is missing from The Fifth Floor. While it is true that this novel heavily involves Chicago’s corrupt political leadership, the inhabitants of The Fifth Floor of City Hall, Kelly is not looking for justice in his fight with mayor and his cronies. It’s all personal, and it all stems from a relationship that ended fifteen years in the past.

I must say that the characters in The Fifth Floor are more interesting and more complex than those in The Chicago Way. There is much more moral ambiguity in this novel. These are good things. But as I said, Harvey attempted to put too much into this story. Not only does it bog down the story, but it also leads to too many secondary plots. There isn’t anything wrong with these plots per se, but they do not fit into the overall story arc very well. For instance, a federal judge who appeared in The Chicago Way played an unnecessarily bigger role this time. This judge could have fulfilled her plot functions in much the same way as in the first novel, but Harvey gave a bigger role in the second. It felt awkward and unnatural in a way that nothing in the first novel did. There was also an added scene whose purpose seems to be nothing more than showing us how tough and fearless Michael Kelly is. After the PI was thrown in jail, he started a fight with his cellmate. I know why, but I don’t know why. These two are examples that show how cluttered The Fifth Floor was. It just doesn’t flow well.

Other than what was written above, I had two major issues with The Fifth Floor. The first is a break-in of Kelly’s apartment. It was too much of a contrived coincidence for me that the break-in occurred on the first night a particular woman spent the night with Kelly. The fact that the woman was present becomes a big deal for moving the plot forward. Also, after we learn the identity of the intruder, I wanted to know how this individual knew anything about item that was the motivation for the break-in. The item in question was a secret. Not many people knew about it. The only people who could have told the intruder about said item were the men of The Fifth Floor. Those men had no reason to share what they knew with the intruder. It doesn’t make sense to me, and it is a big negative in terms of my feelings about the novel.

The other major issue is that there was a gem of a plot point that Harvey ignored until the epilogue. There were moments that hinted at Kelly thinking about it, but it was never explored. In my mind, it was a more intriguing and potentially more emotional secondary plot than anything involving the federal judge. This would have also created more of the grit and rhythm of The Chicago Way.

More than anything else, it was that rhythm that was missing from The Fifth Floor. For now, I’ll chalk it up to a sophomore slump. I hope The Third Rail does not suffer from the same issues.

C+