The Perfect Setting For a Thriller?

After more than a decade struggling to write thrillers, Adam Gittlin realized the setting he needed was right in front of him: commercial real estate. “My first book, a psychological thriller, was difficult to write,” Mr. Gittlin, a principal at his family-owned real estate firm, Gittlin Companies Inc., said. “Then one night it struck me: This is what I’m looking for. I know this. It’s a fast-paced industry with egos as big as the buildings.”That was five years ago. In the early mornings and weekends since, Mr. Gittlin, 35, penned “The Deal,” a thriller about a young commercial real estate broker pulled into an elaborate scheme. The book combines the chemical excesses of Bret Easton Ellis’s “American Psycho” with a John Grisham-style plot, and it has an art-crime subplot reminiscent of Dan Brown’s “Da Vinci Code.”The book, which will be published by Ipswich, Mass.-based Oceanview Publishing on May 1, is clearly a product of Mr. Gittlin’s years as a high-octane commercial real estate broker.He joined SL Green Realty Corp., one of the city’s biggest landlords, after graduating from Syracuse University with an M.B.A. in international business. There he met his longtime mentor, Howard Tenenbaum, an executive vice president in the leasing side of the company. He also got his first taste of the type-A personalities that wheel and deal office space.“I’d go out all the time; I was always working on a deal,” Mr. Gittlin said over lunch at the Staghorn Steakhouse in Midtown last week. “It’s a great backdrop for a thriller. You’ve got unsavory characters and great people. There is a ton of money moving around.”The characters in “The Deal,” Mr. Gittlin said, are amalgamations of people he met as a real estate broker and as an executive at his family business overseeing real estate and private equity investments. The company owns such buildings as 360 W. 31st St. and 21 Penn Plaza.Some of the plot points of “The Deal” are taken from incidents in Mr. Gittlin’s own life, but much of it is sheer broker fantasy. The premise: A Russian businessman seeks out a young commercial broker, Jonah Gray, for help buying a large office building. The time line is three weeks and the budget is $500 million. After the proposal is announced, the story quickly gets tangled up with a family drama, international art crime, and Bacchanalian nights.Much of “The Deal” takes place in limousines and taxis, Fifth Avenue townhouses and luxury penthouses, the elevators of commercial towers, and trendy restaurants and nightlife spots around town. Not a chapter goes by without the protagonist imbibing a “Sapphire and tonic, three olives,” a “Monte Cristo #2,” or, as the pace quickens, a joint or a line of cocaine in a bathroom.Mr. Gittlin uses fake buildings but real restaurants as the setting for many of the meetings and dramatic encounters in the novel. Within 61 pages, Jonah visits or mentions Balthazar, Nello, Il Mulino, the Rainbow Room, Sushi Samba, Peter Luger Steakhouse, Harry Cipriani, davidburke & donatella, and Ben Benson’s Steakhouse.“It’s another example of commercial real estate being the stage for our lives,” Mr. Gittlin said. “Restaurants, like offices, are simply spaces leased and outfitted.” The prose in “The Deal” is brash and over the top. Characters are described by the brands of their clothing. An enigmatic Russian businessman is described as tan and wearing “a Navy Versace suit with a lime green ETRO shirt, no tie.” Jonah’s strange paramour, Angie, twirls from outfit to outfit, starting with a “satin summer dress … with strappy little matching Jimmy Choos,” then shifting to “tight, low-riding True Religion jeans and form-fitting baseball T-shirt, white with pink sleeves, that said ‘skank’ on the front in glitter.”Mr. Gittlin said he researched the brands to be as specific as possible, often consulting his wife, Raina, who is a producer for “Good Morning America.”“Ten people will see 10 different things when you describe an Armani suit,” he said.Mr. Gittlin’s love of thrillers came from his mother, Ethel, a painter. She’d send him dozens of James Patterson and John Grisham paperbacks while he was in college.“The other side of my brain comes from my father: He’s a true businessman,” Mr. Gittlin said. His father, Bruce, is also a principal at GCI.Mr. Gittlin wrote his first book, “Dead End,” after finishing an undergraduate psychology degree, also at Syracuse University. He showed the manuscript for the book to a family friend and book publisher, who encouraged him to keep writing. He eventually finished the book, but it was never published. He then spent the next decade working haphazardly on a psychological thriller, “The Men Downstairs,” which was published in 2004. The book sold less than 1,000 copies, according to Nielsen BookScan.“I found it exhausting to research psychological thrillers,” Mr. Gittlin said of the book. “Real estate backgrounds come to me much easier. … This is what I want to be known for: the real estate thriller.”Staying in touch with current trends in the real estate market, Mr. Gittlin will use a large mixed-use development as the backdrop to his next book, with subplots about environmental standards and stock manipulation. His goal is to create two ongoing series, one with Jonah of “The Deal” and the other with the protagonist of the new book, which is untitled.“Real estate in New York, on Manhattan, is amazing,” Mr. Gittlin said. “There is so much drama. An elevator door can open into a quiet mahogany office. It closes again and you are thrust into the middle of a trading floor. There are so many different worlds.”

The Perfect Setting For a Thriller?

The Perfect Setting For a Thriller?

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