Arthur Hailey is legendary for lacing well thought out corporate thrillers, with an element of human drama thrown in to the mix. His best works to date are Wheels, Airport and my favorite 1960’s Hotel which was originally published by Doubleday which I’m reviewing today. Before I read this book, a Hotel was just a place that I went to have food and perhaps for a short stay but after I read it, I never imagined the scale of a large hotel could be so huge and the kind of things occurs inside it to keep it running could be so interesting and fascinating. The plot in almost all of Hailey’s book’s are more or less the same ( only the locations change) pot boiling, derivative, and rather formulaic to say the least. In hotel, airport and wheels -- we encounter people who are basically middle aged men stuck in with white collar jobs and trapped in corporate situations that occurs only once in a while; whereas the narrative is pushed forward with such vivid attention to detail only Hailey could come up with. It’s pretty clear, from the passages in this book, that Mr. Hailey has spent considerable time analyzing the various nuances of a Giant Big Hotel chain with an eye of a humanist which only Stephen king was so good at, especially in fictional thrillers. (Imagine Halley Berry’s call center based thriller “The Call” and you know exactly what I’m talking about.)
The year is 1950 and we’re invited in to the inner workings of a New Orleans Hotel named St. Gregory and to the day to day problems its management and staff encounters with. The book is divided in to 5 Volumes – Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday and the story is unfolded through the events that unravels during these five working days, where the management and the staff is struggling with a seemingly dangerous financial crisis that actually, represented a quintessential part of that particular Decade in United States of America (The great depression).
Firstly let me lay out the characters for you as to who they are, where they come from and what responsibility they are bestowed with. The hotel is owned by Warren Trent; he has a personal secretary named Christine Francis. The management is bad and is losing money since the majority of the profit margin is coming from food business and not from room rentals. Peter McDermott is the assistant manager of the hotel. He was hired by Warren, despite his troubled past with his wife, simply due to his professional skills which he gained while he was graduating in Hotel Management from Cornell University.
The hotel’s mortgage payable is due on Friday, the day when the administrative heads is likely to take big decisions with respect to management changes and a likely acquisition of the hotel involving a business tycoon named Curtis O’Keefe. Curtis, along with his girlfriend DODO, is very much interested in owning the hotel and offered Warren 3 Million USD in return, an amount which is sufficient to pay off the due mortgages of hotel St. Gregory. Warren reluctantly gives them a deadline which is Friday afternoon -- the day the company will take big decisions regarding the future of its operations.
The book begins with a couple of anecdotes that occurs inside it which constitutes the major parts of the novel. One is the disturbances on the eleventh floor. Peter advices the head porter, Herbie Chandler to look into it. But actually it was the porter himself who gave the room to the 4 youngsters in order to gain some quick money, without the knowledge of neither the administrative heads nor the management. As things turned out, the 4 were drunk and was behaving rudely with Marsha, a young girl who gets trapped in their prostitute-running business chain, mainly centered on big restaurant chains. The four were trying to rape Marsha and when she cries for help, Aloysius Royce, the Negro servant of Warren overhears it, arrives quickly and gets attacked by the intruders. At this time, Peter pops himself in to the scene and finds the disturbing truths about both the head porter and also Marsha. Marsha tells peter that she is the daughter of a well known business tycoon and requests him not to inform this incident to police as it will get her and her father in to the never-ending dangers of law & order; Peter agrees to it, gives a strong warning to Chandler and lets off the four youngsters with a strong caveat.
Another interesting passage involves The Duke and Duchess of Croydon, the couple who were in the headlines for a gruesome hit-and-run accident that occurred not-so-long ago. The Duke kills a woman and her daughter and arrives at the St. Gregory to hide away from the police. The Duchess, complaints to Warrant Trent the owner, about a strangely insulting behavior from one of their waiters, in order to create an alibi for herself and the Duke. But both of them gets caught when Peters comes to know about their bribe agreement with Mr. Ogilvie, who is the greedy detective of the Gregory hotel. Apparently the detective has seen the car accident involving Duke and the Duchess and the two women; and the royal couple promises to pay him a ransom with the intention of keeping him quiet.
The third passage involves the strange noises from Room # 1439 where one Mr. Albert Wells lives in. Albert was seriously sick and fortunately for the company; Christine, the personal secretary of Peter McDermott, managed to deal with the incident and save Albert’s life in the process. The books also refers to Keycase Milne, a thief who steals money and jewels from every single room by stealing the master key from the waiter and the cleaning staff. He operates in midnight, a time when everybody is asleep and to our disbelief and the duchess, steals the money and jewels of the royal couple and runs away from the scene.
All these incidents culminates in to a spellbinding climax, which takes place on Friday morning -- 11.30 am to be exact -- a time when all of the characters and the story undergoes major paradigm shift both to their disbelief and to the reader’s. We never know what’s gonna happen with each character & the story from the beginning they’re in till the end and that I have to say, constitutes the ultimate success of both Arthur Hailey and his tantalizing novel.
This book, when it was released in 1965 was met with severe criticisms especially from the community of Service Industry and from the General public. The main point of criticism had something to do with Hailey’s portrayal of the black characters (Africans I think) and the bald racism they encounters with. Hailey refers to African American’s as “Negros” and those characters are rarely given names unlike the inconsequential white-characters. Worst of all is when Peter goes into the basement of the hotel furnace and describes the man working there as “Big Negro”. Embarrassingly, Hailey tells us how the man looked upon McDermott as a deity because he’s only the second man to have ever taken time to come see him, the first being Captain Yolles. Another problem with the novel is the fact it all boils down to one logic defying, genre foiling and manipulated happy ending which, as I mentioned earlier, more or less forms the crux of all Arthur Hailey fictions; need not be the case in real scenario all the time especially in reality based thrillers.
But at the end of it all, these are minor hiccups since Hailey successfully blends the personal stories of these characters with a story that challenges the mind and engages the spirit. By really caring about the way his characters interact with each other, combined with the structured methodical approach to literature, he manages to pull off a perfect blend of genre thrills with the kind of industry minutia that you wouldn’t want to miss at any cost. Hotel is entertaining as it is uncompromising. I’m going with 5 out of 5.