“The entrance to Hotel Beresford is art deco. Strict lines, geometry and arches showing cubist influence. The monochrome carpet screams elegance as it leads towards the desk that stretches the length of one wall, marble with chrome embellishments. Or, at least, it once looked that way. Back when writers and poets and dignitaries roamed the hallways and foyer. It still feels lavish. Glamorous, even. But faded. And a little old-fashioned.”
Ever since I read The Beresford I’ve been wondering what was going on through the other entrance. The entrance merely hinted at in one of it’s scenes. If what was going on up there was more weird or dangerous than the apartments at the front, I dreaded to think! In my review for the first book I wrote about the Dakota Building in New York City, because my mind kept drifting towards it while reading. It has just the atmosphere for this particular den of iniquity, it has a brooding sense of menace or presence of evil. Yet inside it reminds me of the Chelsea Hotel, a NYC landmark where in the mid Twentieth Century writers, musicals and artists lived. Arthur Miller, Bob Dylan, Arthur C. Clarke, Andy Warhol and Edie Sedgwick all inhabited the hotel in the 1960’s.
“Each floor looks the same yet somehow has its own unique landscape; it’s known for something particular. A celebrity affair. A mysterious death. A legendary party. Rumours that a serial killer crashed there between sprees. Rock stars smashing up rooms. Writers creating their masterpieces. Some is legend, much is true. All is talked about. With fondness, fascination and morbid curiosity.”
The author tells his story through a series of fascinating characters who live or work in the building. A young boy called Otis who lives on the seventh floor with his parents, who are constantly at war. Sam is an angry man who lets everyone feel his displeasure, often taking out his anger on wife Diane and son, Otis. Diane is turning tricks while Sam is at work in order to have an escape fund, often leaving Otis hanging round the building trying to avoid what’s going on. His favourite place to hang out is at their neighbours, but knows his mum would go crazy if she found out. Neighbour Danielle is a jazz singer with a voice so smokey it immediately conjures up exactly the kind of bar that would employ her. She likes to sit on her couch, under the window with one leg dangling out into the street. Along the corridor are the Zhaos, a sweet Chinese couple who also like to dangle out of their window, smoking something a little stronger than Danielle. Then, living in the penthouse on the top floor, is Mr Balliol. He owns the building and has the disconcerting ability to know everything that’s going on in the rooms he rents out and often sidles up to guests and his staff with no warning or sound. His unique staff are working on a business conference which will keep the hotel busy for a couple of days, but today is going to be an unusual day. Many different rumours swirl around the Beresford Hotel, some more fantastical and darker than others. It’s had more than it’s fair share of deaths, some accidental and some less so. Today is going to test the people who dismissed those darker rumours as impossible. Anything is possible at The Beresford Hotel.
“Peeling paint and faded hopes. Much like Carol. Carol seems to age with the building. For every strip of wallpaper that gets ripped or falls away, Carol gets another wrinkle. When the front facade gets uplifted with a new paint job or some detail on the masonry, Carol turns up with a Botoxed forehead or facelift. But not from a reputable surgeon. From somebody she saw advertising in the back of a magazine.”
Of all the characters I was absolutely transfixed by hotel manager Carol who seems like part of the building. She is that wonderful mix of unobtrusive, but yet ever present when needed, that all the best hotel employees have. No one notices the person who quietly sits in her office or on reception, but Carol has an uncanny way of knowing most things that go on in the hotel. She can probably guess at the rest, but doesn’t share Mr Balliol’s seemingly supernatural abilities. She has the world weariness of having seen it all before; most guest’s behaviour is not as unique as they would like to think. So she’s adept at covering up minor indiscretions all the way up to the accidentally dead: the husband who’s beaten his wife for years and finally gets his comeuppance, a solo sex game gone wrong or prostitutes- who end up accidentally dead more than most. Nothing much surprises Carol, even if a business conference does turn into a wild party or bacchanalian orgy. Yet behind the secret door to her inner office we see a softer Carol, perhaps the real woman beneath he hard nosed employee. It’s clear she’s suffered a loss. One guest who has spied Carol’s profile on a website has noticed this crack under the surface:
“He remembers Carol’s profile among the twenty that he settled on. He could see her former beauty, but this isn’t about going deeper than the surface, it isn’t some outreach programme. It isn’t benevolence or sensing someone’s spirit. Danny can see that Carol is broken. And he likes that. She had loved somebody so completely and then they died, and she has never recovered.”
Her soulmate and husband Jake is almost fatally injured in an accident and hasn’t come out of a coma since and as the weeks go on she begins to realise that the Jake she knew and loved was gone. His body was here, but not his mind, and the more time that passes the more it dawns on her that he is going to need help with his most basic human functions – he will have to be fed and piss into a bag for the rest of his life, if it can be called that. In desperation she calls on God, she will do anything if it will save the man she loves. God doesn’t answer. Yet bargaining is her only hope and if God won’t answer ……
Will Carver is one of the most unique writers I’ve ever read and this latest novel is no exception. He understands human nature. Not that all of us are checking into hotels and choking the life out of prostitutes, but he gets the smallest most innocuous and innocent thoughts as well as the darker side of our nature. His narrative voice is conspiratorial, it lets us into every corner of the hotel and also gives us curious little asides about the world we live in. Many of the speeches are recognisable as things we’ve thought and said about the absurdities and horrors of our world.
I loved his insight into writing through the character of I.P. Wyatt who also lives on the seventh floor and is struggling with that difficult second novel after a very successful first. His words are probably self-reflexive – where an author writes their own experience of writing the novel into their novel – although I do hope Carver isn’t applying Wyatt’s method.
“Some days he writes without breathing for hours, others he spits four perfectly formed words onto the page. And each evening, he deletes everything. He can’t stay in love with his words. He had it so perfect. Anything less than that and he will be chewed up by the press and readers and strangers online who just want to vomit vitriol with no personal consequence. Even if he can replicate the quality of that last book, it won’t be that book, that surprise success. And too much time has passed now. It will never live up to the hype. He should have just churned something out quickly. Something that could be torn apart that he wouldn’t care about.”
Carver has taken the age old tale of the Faustian pact and brought it up to date, into the 21st Century where despite all the advances in science and technology there are still terrible events we can’t control. As we all know, especially if we’ve watched Peter Cook and Dudley Moore’s film Bedazzled, making that sort of bargain or deal rarely benefits the desperate petitioner. The brilliance of Carver is that when we think we’ve worked out what’s going on, just like the twelve elite businessmen at their conference find out, a whole new level opens up before us. This is a daring novel, with a deep vein of human emotion at the centre. Yet it’s also playful, thrilling and dangerously dark indeed. If you’re not convinced by me then I’ll let Carver persuade you in his own words.
“When you watch a television soap opera, things are hyperreal. It’s unfathomable to have that many murderers and fraudsters and adulterers living on one street as part of one of three largely incestuous families. Life isn’t like that. Things don’t happen in that way. Hotel Beresford makes television soap operas look like a four-hour Scandinavian documentary about certified tax accountancy.”
Published 9th November 2023 by Orenda Books
Meet the Author
Will Carver is the international bestselling author of the January David series and the critically acclaimed, mind-blowingly original Detective Pace series, which includes Good Samaritans (2018), Nothing Important Happened Today (2019) and Hinton Hollow Death Trip (2020), all of which were ebook bestsellers and selected as books of the year in the mainstream international press. Nothing Important Happened Today was longlisted for both the Goldsboro Books Glass Bell Award 2020 and the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year Award. Hinton Hollow Death Trip was longlisted for Guardian’s Not the Booker Prize, and was followed by four standalone literary thrillers, The Beresford, Psychopaths Anonymous, The Daves Next Door and Suicide Thursday. Will spent his early years in Germany, but returned to the UK at age eleven, when his sporting career took off. He currently runs his own fitness and nutrition company, and lives in Reading with his children.
THE BERESFORD is currently in development for TV.
If you would like to get in contact, I can usually be found on TWITTER/X @will_carver but who knows how long that will last..?
You could always check out my website where you can join the MAILING LIST to stay updated with deals and competitions and which EVENTS I will be attending throughout the year. (There are also many hidden easter eggs within the site, just as there are in my books. Feel free to click around and see what you find.)
Recently, I have also become a podcaster and present the LET’S GET LIT podcast with fellow writer SJ Watson, where we discuss books and writing each week while sharing a drink. (Find us wherever you get your podcasts from.)
Oh, and just in case TWITTER implodes, I can also be found here…
FACEBOOK – @WillCarverAuthor
INSTAGRAM/THREADS – @will_carver
BLUE SKY – @willcarver
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