1.   An ingenious, original first novel that pits empiricism against intuition in elevator inspection by way of approaching racial struggle and social progress.

2.   But it has been hamstrung from doing much about elevator inspection.

3.   City officials stressed, however, that the corruption mainly involved elevator inspections.

4.   Mayor Rudolph Giuliani also signed an emergency order Thursday that allows all elevator inspections to be done in the coming weeks by private inspectors.