2. The Intuitionist, Colson Whitehead

Colson Whitehead’s best known novel doesn’t take place in New York City, but in an unnamed city in a retro parallel universe where one of the most prestigious professions is that of elevator inspector. Both the unnamed skyscraper-choked city and Manhattan would not have grown the way they did without elevators of course. The Empiricist school of elevator inspectors rely on mechanical expertise to ascertain faults, while the Intuitionists can sense whether or not something’s wrong. Lila Mae Watson, the first African American woman to be promoted to elevator inspector, is an Intuitionist. When an elevator she’s just inspected goes into freefall, she finds herself at the centre of a Noir-style labyrinthine investigation focused on finding out what led to the disaster.