Review: A second look at this Novel
Rating: 2 out of 5
Date: 03 20, 2011
"The Door at the Top of the Stairs" was written by Alison Holt.  This appears to be a third book for Ms. Holt and a departure from her previous two detective mystery novels. The current novel is of the psychological thriller genre. The book is written in conversational dialog spoken by the characters. The writing is straight forward and does not offer any degree of complexity in structure which should be generally acceptable by a wide audience.The story is about a young female police officer, "Jesse Shaunessy" twenty six years old, who was dismissed from the police force after five years of service. The police psychologist assessed Jesse to be too traumatized to continue to serve. Jesse was an undercover narcotics agent. She witnessed her partner "Pete" accept a bribe and sell her out to a narcotics dealer who subsequently tortured her in retaliation for shooting his brother.Jesse, looking for work, shows up at the horse farm run by 57 year old Morgan Davis and her 65 year old life partner Dr. Ryland Caldwell. Ryland is a retired psychologist who after observing the odd behavior (and physical scars) on Jesse, engages in her rehabilitation. The story of Jesse's abduction and torture is then revealed through a series of "regressive sessions" devised by Ryland as therapy.  While this is all going on, there is a secondary plot afoot being crafted by one Cody Maitland, a college dropout, hired by Morgan as a favor to her neighbor, Cody's father. Cody is featured as a plainly despicable young man bent on causing Jesse to get fired through his plotting of nefarious incidences that Jesse will be blamed for.At about the time that Jesse is recovered from her therapy, the story, in an unexpected twist of events, culminates in the conclusion of the drama and some additional revelations about Jesse and her ordeal.There were a number of things about this book that I did not care for. The character of Jesse and Morgan were a bit too overdone for my likes. While Jesse may have had some reason for her incorrigible behavior, Morgan's was not comprehensible in comparison. Further, I thought the male attributes applied to Morgan made her look foolish at times. The description of Richard as a "brilliant" narcissistic killer also seemed misplaced. There was nothing revealed about Richard that lead the reader to conclude that he was "brilliant".  Quite the contrary, he came across as decidedly evil, but not particularly bright as evidenced by a number of silly misjudgments.  The Character of Cody seemed equally misplaced. It was uncharacteristic for a young man like Cody to have harbored a hatred so thoroughly consuming as to result in his destruction. That's not to say it couldn't happen, just that there was no particular background given about Cody that explained his behavior and thus left the reader to his own conclusions. Finally, I did not find any appreciation of the life style portrayal of the female characters. While there is nothing inherently wrong (a non-religious view) with such a portrayal, I didn't find it necessary to advance the story. Certainly there have been many good books written with characters of alternate life styles, but these almost entirely are about the characters as persons and not about their life style per se. In this case, the depiction of all the females in the story as lesbian did not offer any necessary structure to the drama. If Morgan had been Martin, it wouldn't have mattered. Unfortunately for me, some of the intimate descriptions made me decidedly uncomfortable - as in the same realm as imagining 26 year old Anna Nicole Smith with 88 year old J. Howard Marshall II.....creepy.Overall I would recommend this novel only with reservations. I think there are underlying issues with it that would disenfranchise too many readers.