The Intuitionist

Lila Mae Watson is the first Black female elevator inspector ever in the department, she's an Intuitionist who can enter an elevator and "intuit" any defects. She's outnumbered by Empiricists in the department, who are almost all white and male, and eager to blame an Intuitionist when an elevator goes into freefall after Lila Mae's inspection. 

The divide between Empiricists and Intuitionists seems like a simple ideological divide at first, but that central question becomes more complicated as Lila Mae learns more about Intuitionism's founder while investigating the crash. Lila Mae isn't the first Black inspector, and I'm unsure whether she's the first female one, but the combination of the two means that a nearly endless slurry of sexism and racism are directed her way, either singly or in combination. It's consistent but not constant, and whether and how characters disparage her is part of their characterization and contributes to the worldbuilding as a whole. The antagonists attempt to weaponize her identity for their own gain in a variety of ways, whether from things she chose (being an Intuitionist) or things she didn't choose (being Black and female). 

There are long sections which contain delightful thoughts about elevators, including but not limited to competing theories of elevators, how the passenger exists in context with the elevator, where escalators fit in as vertical conveyances, and many more. 

The mystery is tense and engaging, I was hooked almost immediately, became riveted about a third of the way in, and was completely engaged through to the end. Lila Mae is purposeful and conscientious, which are excellent qualities for the protagonist of a mystery. Excellently layered, I love this.

I give him props for being so ambitious with a first novel, but I struggled with the elevator thing and constantly had to remind myself that it was allegorical of larger and more meaningful tropes. The conceit wore on me and just seemed cute by the end, which I think he recognized with the whole "it started as a joke and then became real to him once it seemed real to others" revelation in the third act. I was in the grocery store a few hours ago and had the thought in the produce section that the book could just as easily have been about the first black "produce arranger," and it would not have lost any of its (unrealized) potential for providing insight into modernity through the prism of race. I also had a hard time seeing Lila Mae as anything other than a cipher for the larger message he wanted to transmit, rather than a feeling character with believable motivations. But it's a far better first novel than I could have ever managed!