Other Available Formats
Overview
"A delicious thrill-ride of breakneck twists and turns. . . . Evoking Grisham and Highsmith, Bonnie Kistler is a masterful plate-spinner of plot, deftly weaving together the worlds of fashion, high finance and white-shoe law to reveal their seamiest secrets and shared underbellies, all via characters who live, breathe, and scare the hell out of us on every page."--Cassidy Lucas, author of Santa Monica
"An absolutely spellbinding thriller. . . . An utterly engrossing and thoroughly entertaining story."--Booklist (starred review)
Combining the propulsive narrative drive of The Firm with the psychological complexity of The Silent Patient, a gripping and original thriller about two professional women--colleagues at an international fashion conglomerate--who enter an elevator together . . . but only one is alive when they reach the ground floor.
On a cold, misty Sunday night, two women are alone in the offices of fashion conglomerate Claudine de Martineau International. One is the company's human resources director. Impeccably dressed and perfectly coiffed, she sits at her desk and stares somberly out the window. Down the hall, her colleague, one of the company's lawyers, is buried under a pile of paperwork, frantically rushing to finish.
Leaving at the same time, the two women, each preoccupied by her own thoughts, enter the elevator that will take them down from the 30th floor.
When they arrive at the lobby, one of the women is dead. Was it murder or suicide?
An incredibly original novel that turns the office thriller on its head, The Cage is a wild ride that begins with a bang and picks up speed as it races to its dramatic end.
Details
- ISBN-13: 9780063089143
- ISBN-10: 0063089149
- Publisher: Harper
- Publish Date: February 2022
- Dimensions: 9.1 x 6 x 1.6 inches
- Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
- Page Count: 352
Related Categories
BookPage® Reviews
The Cage is a psychological thriller that’s tailor-made to be read in one breathless session. It’s so fast-paced and wide in scope that it feels almost cinematic. After working late on a Sunday night, Human Resources Director Lucy Barton-Jones and recently hired attorney Shay Lambert get in the elevator to leave the headquarters of fashion empire CDMI. The power goes out, trapping them both. After a frantic 911 call, the power returns and Lucy is dead from an apparently self-inflicted gunshot wound. According to Shay, Lucy had a panic attack while stranded in the elevator and killed herself. But her story doesn’t quite add up to the police, especially when they dig into Shay’s past and discover that her resume is full of omissions and lies. The story certainly doesn’t work for Ingram Barrett, CDMI’s senior vice president and general counsel, given the bad press it will bring the company. He hired Shay only months before, and he’s willing to sacrifice her rather than risk the police looking too closely at Lucy’s recent activities. As the novel alternates between the events of the past and the present investigation, we learn how Shay came to be in the elevator that night. Shay is an unreliable narrator, and through her actions, rather than her words, it becomes apparent that her circumstances—financial, romantic and legal—are very different from what she projects. The way author Bonnie Kistler (a former attorney) portrays the contrast between what Shay tells the people around her and what the reader actually sees happening is captivating. You can never fully believe Shay, and as the mystery of Lucy’s death gains more momentum, readers are forced to rely on clues in the background to understand what happened. Lucy’s death isn’t the only mystery here: What were Lucy and Ingram involved with that makes him so eager for the police to arrest Shay for murder? Who is Shay really, and what’s her endgame? Part locked-room mystery, part legal thriller, The Cage weaves these separate plot lines together so seamlessly that readers will be genuinely shocked by the finale. This thriller is the perfect book for readers who value mind games over violence but still want an explosive ending.
