A peculiar halting noir with two main features. The story is one of mid-twentieth century type bigotry set in a Steampunk-like world where there are two battling philosophies on the nature and function of elevators, the Empiricists and the Intuitionists. The protagonist is an African-American Intuitionist elevator inspector-ess who takes the role of the detective and becomes something more than that. Among the author’s various accomplishments are the avoidance of all the puns and simple metaphors that spring to mind, including who is taking the fall when an elevator plunges to its destruction and the significance of the elevation of the African-American characters to become elevator inspectors. Ultimately, I think the reader’s question will be, “Is there some other message for me here in this complex construction?” If I knew, I would rate this more highly.