The Doorway
Alan Spencer
Samhain Publishing
August 4, 2015
Reviewed by Tim Potter
Alan Spencer’s latest Samhain Horror release, The Doorway, is an interesting and entertaining blend of extreme horror and classic mystery. The story centers around Morty Saggs, a workaday everyman who comes home late from the neighborhood bar to find his wife missing. Tension mounts as Morty calls in the police, his daughter and friends to help him find Glenda, who has no reason to be missing. The supernatural also comes into play as the outline appears around his bedroom door, accompanied by a smell of burning, and then disappears in a flash like it came. Small town secrets and a decade old murder come into play as the characters seek to resolve the mystery surrounding the disappearance and the doorway and to do so without it costing their lives.
The novel starts with a drunken Morty staggering home from a night of drinking with friends hoping that his wife Glenda will not be too upset with him. Things go wrong quickly, and paranoia builds, as he can’t find Glenda. Their marriage is a happy one and she has no reason to go missing of her own accord so Morty calls the police. As an investigation by friends and authorities begins, Morty is quickly falling under suspicion of wrongdoing, a situation only made worse by the effect the mysterious doorway is having on his mental state. Things come to a head as his friends gather in his home, a reporter sneaks in and police storm the place.
Everyone in the house is transported to, what appears to be, a different version on Morty and Glenda’s home. The house is full of bodies, some dead and some killing the living. All of the different factions have to put suspicions and assumptions aside and find a way to survive in the house that has become an abattoir. They quickly come to the realization that they have to solve a mystery, not of Glenda’s disappearance, but of something that happened in the house many years before. Only then will they have a chance to leave the house alive. An element of classic mystery stories comes into play here, much in the vein of Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None. One of the characters is either the perpetrator or holds the answer to who is. The also horror kicks into high-gear at this point as the body count mounts quickly and graphically, and none of the characters are safe from harm.
The novel is very entertaining, with only a few real flaws. One is the mystery surrounding Morty and Glenda’s house. Everyone seems to know the history of the house except the two owners, and such a dramatic history would have certainly been uncovered during ten years of ownership. It’s unrealistic, but in a story about people transported through a supernatural doorway to solve a mystery it’s a tiny, and completely forgivable, issue. The only other thing worth mentioning is that the characters are often given to monologues, speaking to the others at length. During these speeches, and at other times, the dialogue is uneven and sounds like it is being read from a script, not speech occurring in natural conversation. It’s also a minor issue and doesn’t detract from the general enjoyment of the book.
The ending of the book is interesting and, in a number of ways, unexpected. The resolution of the ten year old mystery in the house is a bit of a letdown, again evoking Agatha Christie, this time for pinning the deed on an inconsequential character who had nearly no part in the story up to that point. The rest of the characters are tied up well and the greater mystery of the doorway and the house come to a satisfying resolution. The Doorway is a good extreme horror story, with solid mystery and supernatural elements that will appeal to a wide range of genre fans.
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