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Voyeurs and apartment buildings seem to go hand in hand. There's Rear Window, and that episode of Friends. Edward Hopper, who gets several references in Sliver, often painted from a voyeuristic point of view, and how many New York apartments feature telescopes? But there is a line, and Ira Levin's watcher crosses it.

The rating for this book is absolutely abysmal, and so I picked it up for a dollar at the library book store determined to disagree. I enjoyed JG Ballard's High-Rise earlier this year, and for a dollar I was willing to risk it. But should 1300 Madison Avenue find itself in competition with Ballard's building for 'Horror High Rise of the Year,' Ballard's would be the victor. Creepiest on the hand, that honor is Levin's. With its pervy watcher, masturbating to the building's residents taking a bath, having sex etc. Clothed in Central Park though, would there be an issue?

There is a mystery that slowly builds, a series of mysterious deaths, and a relationship that develops at breakneck speed. Baby, darling, I love you—all within three weeks of hooking up? Turns out voyeurism can be a couples activity. The orange idiot, then still revered as a real estate tycoon, gets an unfortunate reference, but so does Now, Voyager. I was into the whole soap opera mother thing—soap operas, which scratch that same voyeuristic itch, remain an area of endless fascination for me—but let's not forget the Oedipal aspects ("Mommy says no and I'm a good boy, right?"). Farce aspiring to Greek tragedy. The cat's part in all of it pushed me over the (l)edge, not to mention the heavy-handed recurrence of the number 13. Cheap and trashy, but cheap and trashy can be fun—if expectations are managed.