CLEVELAND, Ohio - A new era begins for downtown Cleveland this week with the opening of Heinen's in the former Cleveland Trust Bank on East Ninth Street and Euclid Avenue.
A far different Cleveland is portrayed in Shaker Heights author D.M. Pulley's new thriller, "The Dead Key," published this week and set on the same historic corner, in two different eras. Pulley, winner of the 2014 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award for "The Dead Key," focuses on a time when the building at Ninth and Euclid was the center of commerce and power in Cleveland, not a retailer of gourmet cheese and cold cuts.
This portion of her twisty mystery is set in 1978, and centers on an enterprising young secretary named Beatrice Baker who discovers that behind First Bank's gilded walls and smoky office doors there are dark secrets. The teenage worker gets entangled in a dangerous scheme to uncover the corruption, much of it plotted while enjoying drinks at the infamous Theatrical Grill, or while at her modest bedsit in Little Italy, or her ailing aunt's bedside in University Hospitals.
Beatrice's portion of "The Dead Key" alternates with chapters set in 1998, still at the bank. But now the First Bank is a dusty monolithic ruin, empty for two decades since it abruptly closed in 1978, just weeks after the city of Cleveland defaulted. (In real life, Cleveland Trust was one of Cleveland's largest creditors, and the bank's refusal to renew credit on $14 million in loans lead to the city's default, and Mayor Dennis Kucinich's wrath.)
Iris Latch, a smart but bored young engineer -- albeit one who parties a bit too much at the Lava Lounge and other 1998 hotspots -- is given the assignment to survey the long-abandoned bank, which was closed so abruptly that family photos sit on dust-encrusted desks. All on her own, this young woman is sent to the bank, to spend day-by-solitary-day in the abandoned tower, rotunda and vault.
Like Beatrice before her, she also finds all is not as it seems at the bank. Floor plans on different floors do not line up, suggesting hidden rooms. Mysterious lights appear in windows and creepy sounds flow through the ventilation ducts. But most mysteriously, many of the safety deposit boxes still seem to be full, their contents never claimed. When Iris finds a ring of keys, she sets out to investigate -- though this takes her far from her job mandate.
Back in 1978, it's the safety deposit boxes that also intrigue Beatrice, who has been befriended by a worldly older secretary at the bank, Max McDonnell. Max is also investigating wrongdoing at the bank, supposedly at the behest of her boss. The two discover a tangled web of lies and corruption that reaches all the way to the offices on the top floors, and City Hall. But figuring out who is behind the plot is harder to pinpoint, especially as the stakes rise and the women's lives are endangered.
In 1998, Iris soon finds herself on the same trail of corruption in the shuttered bank as she gets further and further from her blueprinting job. She even becomes aware of Beatrice and Max as she finds some of their files and keys, and, ominously, some of Beatrice's more personal belongings. Then Iris finds something much worse in the closed bank.
Pulley, an engineer by training, does a fine job of juggling numerous plots and characters in both 1978 and 1998 for much of her debut novel. It's an especially tricky format, given the time-shifting, and she does this fluidly, flawlessly dropping hints and references to 1978 in the later section.
But tying together such a complex structure and intricate storyline eventually proves too much. The plot gets convoluted in the last third, with the conspiracy angle fizzling out. The ending is quite dramatic -- and violent -- but does not answer many of the book's many questions, nor go as far as earlier hints promised. Nor does it provide much closure for her characters.
Still, while many of the secondary characters are rather cardboard -- the Italian gangster, the fishy security man, the 1970s bosses with roving hands -- Pulley does a wonderful job in fleshing out her two main females. These women are very real, from Beatrice's almost pathetic shyness that morphs into resourcefulness to Iris' post-college malaise and bad-boyfriend decision-making. These are not cliched sleuths; they're real, smart women with flaws and courage.
But for Clevelanders, it will certainly be Pulley's evocation of Cleveland's past that is the book's key appeal. The author, who was inspired to write "The Dead Key" after working as a surveyor of a building adjacent to Cleveland Trust, does a marvelous job of re-creating 1978 Cleveland. From the bank's gilded vault and swanky offices to gritty Euclid Avenue, the raucous Theatrical Grill, elegant Stouffer's Inn and the dodgy Lancer Motel, she not only re-creates the sites, but also the rough edge of a once-great city about to fall into default and decline. Ditto for her re-creation of 1998, more recent but still starkly different from today.
The desolate downtown and litter-filled bank she portrays bear little resemblance to what is now taking shape at East Ninth and Euclid. Of course, the chic Metropolitan hotel and Heinen's grocery may be good news for the city -- but murder and corruption in the prepared foods aisle wouldn't have had quite the same dramatic heft.