The Portable Door
By Tom Holt

     Paul Carpenter seems to be one of life’s losers and when he attends an interview at J W Wells & Co for the position of junior clerk, he doesn’t expect to get it. Neither does he expect to fall in love with the bony, prickly Sophie Pettingell who is trying for the same position. But he does, and as it appears that J W Wells needs two junior clerks. Sophie is there in the office alongside him. But this is the only normal, straightforward thing about it all. Marooned in a vast building that has to be vacated at a quarter to six and where each pointless office task seems more bizarre than the last, Paul thinks of throwing in the towel more than once. But a job is a job, and this one is about to get rather more interesting, or perhaps just a lot more dangerous…

      Magic doors, people sawn in half, Gilbert & Sullivan, swords in chunks of stone that double as patio ornaments…we are definitely in Holt territory here and this is the sort of thing he does best of all. While Terry Pratchett shows how a fantasy world can resemble modern Britain, Tom Holt does the exact opposite and shows how modern Britain can resemble a fantasy world. When this sort of thing works (and this particular novel does beautifully, like a well-oiled machine) it is great fun.

     My favorite Holt novel has hitherto been Overtime, and strangely enough this latest offering seems to echo it almost as though it was a sequel. In some of his books Holt takes one joke and beats the reader over the head with it but here the whole thing is rather more restrained, and he keeps the suspense up throughout the early chapters when nothing more exciting is happening than weird office tasks and unrequited love. In this sense it rather resembles a certain unsung minor classic which I was raving about a couple of years back, namely Angus Mills’ All Quiet On The Orient Express with its subtle tweaking of normality to conjure up a feeling of expectancy in the reader for just about anything. Here it is some sublime satire (there are some laugh-out-loud moments, particularly in the first chapter) and a genuinely satisfying story with some intriguing characters. The whole thing seems ripe for a sequel, or perhaps even a series of sequels and if Holt never returns to the delightful portals of J W Wells & Co it will be a great shame. I must confess here to not being a big fan of either Tom Holt in particular or comic fantasy in general but this book is a real joy. Miss it at your peril!