In 2020, I did a deep dive into Jeff Noon’s fiction for Tor.com. (Evidence the pandemic has destroyed my sense of time: that sentence initially began with the words “last year.”) Among the books I read was something that felt like a rarity for Noon: the mystery novel Slow-Motion Ghosts, set in 1981 and following an alienated detective as he attempts to get to the bottom of a years-old mystery.

Now, I’ve read Noon’s second novel about Henry Hobbes, the detective in question. House With No Doors is a curious novel, in that it’s not immediately clear if a murder has even taken place until well into the book. That meticulous pacing ends up paying off absurdly well as the book proceeds towards its climax, resulting in multiple moments that made me gasp while reading it. Memorable characters, mysteries within mysteries, and atmosphere to spare.

While the books don’t have a lot in common, I found myself thinking a bit about Laird Barron’s (terrific) Isaiah Coleridge novels, another case of a writer who can get very heady and visceral working within a crime-novel framework. In both cases, I think the series step up with the second volume, in that you can see both Noon and Barron working slightly more surreal elements into these more grounded series after opting for a more realistic approach the first time around.