Lock Every Door: A Novel

“‘Tell me about your family. Any next of kin?’ This one’s harder to answer, mainly because it’s worse than losing a job or being cheated on. Whatever I say could open the floodgates to more questions with even sadder responses. Especially if I hint at what happened. And when. And why.”

Jules’s fraught familial past dictates her isolation and loneliness in the narrative present. Losing her job and boyfriend in quick succession compounded her tenuousness in life. She has no one other than Chloe to depend upon for support and thus exists in a state of social alienation. Further, her lack of community augments her vulnerability and makes her susceptible to Nick and the Bartholomew’s exploitative schemes.

“Alone now, I turn to 12A and take a deep, steadying breath. This—right now—is my life. Here. On the top floor of the Bartholomew. Holy shit. Even more astounding is that I’m getting paid to be here. One thousand dollars every week. Money I can use to erase debt and save for a future that’s suddenly far brighter than it was a day ago. A future that’s just on the other side of that door. I unlock it and step inside.”

Jules’s desperation to see her Bartholomew job as a new start stops her from noticing the dangers of the situation. Her vibrant, excited tone captures her eagerness to stay positive and thus to find hope and renewal in her good fortune. Her positivity fogs her judgment and complicates her Pursuit of Truth in a World of Deception.

“It’s the same with the crown molding. Hidden within the intricate plasterwork are similar wide-open eyes and pinched faces. The sensible, rational part of my brain knows it’s an optical illusion. Yet now that I’ve noticed it, I can’t trick my eyes into returning to what they originally saw. Those flowers are gone. All I can see now are the faces. Grotesque ones with warped noses, mutated lips, elongated jaws that make it look as though they’re talking.”

Jules’s impressions of her new apartment’s decor are metaphors for deception, fantasy, and illusion. Jules can’t help but see the wallpaper and molding as a series of threatening faces. This interpretation of her surroundings underscores her penchant for magical thinking while foreshadowing her coming struggle for the truth amid increasingly surreal circumstances.

“But then I think about what’s inside these bulky bags. All those store-brand boxes with their rip-off names and apathetically designed logos. I’d rather Charlie not see them and have the opportunity to judge me, or worse, pity me. Not that he would. No decent person would. Yet the shame and fear are still there. I’d like to say it’s a quirk of my currently dire financial situation, but it’s not.”

Jules’s economic instability erects a barrier between her and the other Bartholomew inhabitants, speaking to Wealthy–Vulnerable Power Dynamics. Jules is embarrassed that others will see her cheap groceries as a sign of her instability. She wants to disguise the groceries because she is ashamed of her own financial instability.

“You and me both, sister. And I’m sorry for getting all creepy on you just now. I’m fine. The Bartholomew is fine. I think I’m just lonely, you know? I’m on board with all the rules except for the one about not having visitors. Sometimes it feels like solitary confinement. Especially since Erica left.”

In this passage, Ingrid helps Jules to acknowledge her own loneliness. Unlike Jules, Ingrid isn’t afraid of admitting that she wants company, making it easier for Jules to do the same. Her confession instigates the characters’ friendship while introducing one of the novel’s major mysteries.

“I realize how overly concerned it sounds. But something about the situation doesn’t sit right with me. I think about last night—the scream rising from her apartment. The uncomfortable delay between my knocks and her opening the door, the dark glint in her eyes that seemed to signal something was wrong. I tell myself I shouldn’t be worried. Yet I am.”

Ingrid’s disappearance motivates Jules to pursue the truth. Jules knows that she shouldn’t let her childhood trauma surrounding her sister’s disappearance dictate her emotions about Ingrid’s whereabouts. However, she can’t escape the parallels between the incidents. For this reason, she becomes devoted to uncovering the truth and ultimately probing the Bartholomew’s covert history and activities.

“‘You’re forgetting that readers need fantasy, too,’ I say. ‘My sister and I used to lie on her bed, reading Heart of a Dreamer and picturing ourselves in Ginny’s shoes. The book showed us there was life outside our tiny, dying town. The book gave us hope. Even now, after all that hope has been stripped away, I still love Heart of a Dreamer and I remain grateful that you wrote it.’”

Jules loved Greta Manville’s novel Heart of a Dreamer as a child because it offered her hope when she felt hopeless, and she carries this love into adulthood. She wants Greta to understand the book’s significance to her as a fantasy that comforted her in a desperate situation. Jules’s articulation of her emotional relationship with fantasy reinforces the book’s symbolic significance.

“Just like that, I realize Ingrid made a mistake when she approached Greta Manville about the Bartholomew’s past. She should have asked someone else. Someone friendly. And handsome. And who has lived here all his life."

Jules fails to perceive Nick Bartholomew’s nefarious intentions, because he poses as a charming and kindly nurturer. She wants to see the best in the people at the Bartholomew and to believe that advancement and redemption are possible for her. Therefore, she lets herself fall for Nick’s deceptive facade, suspending her skepticism and immediately trusting him.

“The fact that Ingrid had it at all brings up a scary prospect. One that completely smashes the idea she left because she was too scared of the Bartholomew’s strange past to stay here. A gun is a weapon. Self-defense. you don’t need one to protect yourself from a building, even if you somehow think it’s haunted. you can’t shoot a ghost. Or a curse, for that matter.”

Ingrid’s gun is a narrative device used to amplify the narrative tension. Jules is determined to find Ingrid, but the stakes of her search change when she discovers a Glock G43 in Ingrid’s storage unit. The gun impresses upon Jules the true dangers of the Bartholomew and heightens her desire to discover the truth about Ingrid, what might befall her, and why.

“‘To thank you for your assistance last night, you may escort me to lunch.’ She says it with benevolent pomp, as if she’s bestowing upon me one of life’s greatest honors. Yet I detect another emotion lurking in the back of her throat—loneliness. Whether she wanted it or not, I’ve dragged her out of her cocoon of books and sudden sleeps. I also suspect that, deep down, Greta likes my company. I loop my arm through hers. ‘I would be happy to escort you.’”

Jules trusts Greta because she empathizes with her and because she has long admired her writing. Although Greta has been cold and condescending to Jules, Jules dismisses Greta’s bad attitude and chooses to see her humanity. She accepts Greta’s invitation to spend time with her because she knows what it’s like to want company but be too afraid to overtly ask for help. In this way, Greta is actually manipulating Jules in this scene, aware of Jules’s isolation, though the author does not reveal this until later.

“The past twenty-four hours have been so strange it borders on the surreal. Ingrid going missing. The fire. having lunch with Greta Manville. It’s so far from my normal existence that it feels like something Greta herself might have written. Chloe was right. It is indeed a strange, alternate universe I’ve stumbled into.”

Jules’s fantasies cloud her Pursuit of Truth in a World of Deception. She chooses to see her early experiences at the Bartholomew as an adventure. She feels as if she’s in a thrilling, fictional tale and embraces her exciting new reality rather than questioning it. This passage foreshadows the dangers Jules will soon face as a result of ignoring these red flags.

“One time is an anomaly. Two times is a coincidence. Three times is proof. But proof of what? That someone at the Bartholomew is preying on apartment sitters? It’s still too preposterous to wrap my head around. Yet so is the coincidence of three young women without families moving out of the building and never contacting their friends again.”

The author uses the events at the Bartholomew to highlight the imbalanced Wealthy–Vulnerable Power Dynamics. After Jules begins to investigate the apartment sitters’ disappearances, she begins to notice parallels between the victims. These parallels suggest a broader, more widespread issue of wealthy, elite classes exploiting vulnerable people.

“I’m now part of this. Unknown is exactly what part I’m playing. Am I prey, like Erica seemed to be, or an inconvenience, like what Dylan and I suspect Ingrid was? Maybe I’m both—a person who looked too hard and said too much, putting myself in the middle of something I can’t begin to understand.”

Jules’s curious nature ensnares her in a mysterious conflict that endangers her throughout the narrative. True to the psychological thriller genre, Jules probes every proverbial locked door she encounters at the Bartholomew. Her dedication to pursuing and uncovering the truth, however, has unsettling consequences.

“Bow Bridge has become a pale strip over black water. A single person strolls across it, oblivious to the fact that she’s being watched. Like I used to be. Just a day or two ago. I envy her ignorance. I wish I could go back to that blissful state. But there’s no coming back from what I know.”

In this passage, Jules reflects on how her Pursuit of the Truth in a World of Deception changed her perspective. When she first arrived at the Bartholomew, she suspended her disbelief to live out her childhood dreams, ignoring danger signs and accepting the building at face value. However, once she starts investigating the building’s dark history, she loses her innocence. She can’t return to her magical way of thinking, because she is now aware of the social, political, and economic dysfunctions that define her world.

“Her arm slides out of it, and the jacket falls open, revealing a white blouse underneath. Pinned to it is a tiny brooch. Gold. In the shape of a figure eight. I let go of the jacket. Marjorie stuffs her arm back into it and pulls it closed. Before she does, I get one last look at the brooch, seeing that it’s not an eight at all. It’s an ouroboros.”

The ouroboros symbol is a motif used to guide Jules’s search. Because she works alone, she doesn’t have an archetypal guide to shepherd her through her harrowing circumstances. Instead, the ouroboros’s appearance in a variety of contexts leads Jules from clue to clue.

“A bubble of anger rises in my chest, hot and bilious. But it’s not directed at Ingrid. I can’t blame her for what she did. She was broke and desperate and saw an easy way to make a lot of money. If our roles were reversed, I might have done the same thing, no questions asked. No, my anger is reserved for Leslie and everyone else in the Bartholomew for exploiting that desperation and turning it into a weapon.”

Reuniting with Ingrid helps Jules to understand the power that the Bartholomew’s residents wield over her. When Ingrid reveals that she cut Jules on purpose the day they collided in the hall, Jules realizes how little regard the building’s permanent residents have for the apartment sitters. This gives her insight into the Wealthy–Vulnerable Power Dynamics, both inside and outside the Bartholomew. Jules doesn’t blame Ingrid for what happened, because she relates to her situation; instead, she blames the wealthy residents who manipulated Ingrid into the act.

“In the bedroom, I go straight to the nightstand and grab the framed photo of my family. Everything else is expendable. This is all I need.”

Jules’s family photograph helps to alleviate her isolation and loneliness. She risks her life to return to the Bartholomew for the photo even after realizing that Nick and his fellow residents are killing apartment sitters. This decision captures her profound attachment to the photo and her desperation to retain family ties, no matter the risks.

“So Ingrid and I had it all wrong. This isn’t about […] the Golden Chalice or devil worship. There is no coven. It’s just a group of dying rich people desperate to save their lives no matter the cost. And Nick is here to facilitate it.”

Here, Riley Sager suggests that US society advantages the wealthy and elite and disadvantages the poor and vulnerable. Nick’s revelations about the Bartholomew’s real mission dismantle Jules’s beliefs in upward socioeconomic mobility. Like her parents, she wanted to believe that the world was a meritocracy—that with enough hard work and determination she could change her circumstances. However, the events at the Bartholomew prove that impossible.

“I can fight back and inevitably lose, making what little time I have left, to use Nick’s words, extremely unpleasant. Or I can make the same choice my parents did. Give up. Succumb. No more pain. No more problems. No more worry and heartache and constant wondering about Jane’s fate. Just a deep, painless slumber in why my family waits for me.”

In this passage, Jules almost stops fighting for survival, hoping to end her pain and reunite with her family. Throughout the novel, Sager demonstrates Jules’s fight for her survival following her sister’s disappearance and parents’ deaths. However, her entrapment at the Bartholomew briefly makes her despair. Nick and the other residents intentionally exploited her isolation and loneliness, weakening her body and her resolve to compel her to give up.

“It’s ironic, I know. That you, who’s so worthless on the outside, is worth so much on the inside. And that people who on the outside offer so much have inside of them things so useless that they must be replaced.”

In this passage, Nick explicitly describes his philosophy about the worth of wealthy people versus that of people without money and influence, emphasizing the theme of Wealthy–Vulnerable Power Dynamics. Now that he believes Jules is trapped, Nick doesn’t try to hide his beliefs. Both he and the Bartholomew represent the sociocultural divides that members of the wealthy class actively uphold.

“My hand resists bringing the flame any closer. This isn’t just some random copy of the book. It’s my copy. Jane’s copy. But I also understand that she’d want me to do it. This isn’t the Bartholomew of her dreams. It’s a shadow version of that fantasy realm. Something dark and rotten to its core.”

Jules’s burning of her copy of Heart of a Dreamer symbolizes letting go of her old fantasies. Though the book comforted her in the past, its promises prove deceptive in the present. In destroying the book, she closes the childish chapter of her life to engage with reality as an adult.

“I haven’t heard her complain once. […] And certainly not about Ingrid, who’s here more often than not, even though she now shares an apartment with Bobbie in Queens. Chloe knows that Ingrid and I are now bound together by what happened. I’ve got Ingrid’s back. She’s got mine. As for Chloe, she looks out for us both.”

Jules and Ingrid’s friendship teaches Jules the importance of community and support. Ever since losing her family, Jules has regarded isolation as an inevitability. However, her experiences at the Bartholomew with Ingrid show her the power of making connections and accepting help.

“But now everyone knows their names. The NYPD published the full list online. So far, thirty-nine families know the fates of their long-missing relatives. Although it’s not happy news, it’s closure […] Bad news is better than no news.”

Jules’s pursuit of the truth throughout the novel grants her a sense of closure. Even though she still doesn’t discover what happened to Jane, her ability to help the apartment sitters’ families find the peace she craves gives her some peace and satisfaction.