Sarah Langan, Audrey's Door

Audrey's Door

Sarah Langan

Harper, Oct 2009, $7.99

ISBN 9780061624216

Following the break up with her fianc Saraub and her mother's lapse into a coma, architect Audrey Lucas feels fortunate to find an apartment in Morningside Heights for under a $1000 a month as she was thinking of relocating to Queens. She moves into the historical Breviary, which was construed in 1861 and is an architect's delight with its rarely used "Chaotic Naturalism" style.

Audrey is a bit taken aback to learn the previous occupant drowned her four small children before killing herself, but prefers bad vibes to the boroughs. Soon after moving in, Audrey's mind begins to lose its grip on sanity. Ghosts and other renters warn her to construct a door before it is too late although the other living occupants are urban hermits of sorts hiding behind the doors they each built. Still even as she is aware she is losing it, Audrey obsessively begins to build the door so they can escape

AUDREY'S DOOR is an engaging haunted apartment house horror thriller that grips the readers mostly because of its Columbia University location; a seemingly unlikely place for a haunting unless you know the neighborhood overlooking Harlem. Audrey is a wonderful protagonist who is loaded with neurotic tendencies. Although the climax can be on a foggy day as far away as Hoboken, fans will enjoy Sarah Langan's tense Gotham thriller.

Harriet Klausner