The Girl on the Porch by Richard Chizmar

Published by Subterranean Press on August 31, 2019

Repeated rings of a doorbell go unanswered until Frank Urban rolls out of bed and finds nobody at the door. In the morning, his wife Angela texts their neighbor. Sarah Tucker remembers hearing their dog barking during the night, so after reading the text she checks the footage on their home’s security camera. The camera shows a young girl on the porch, obviously scared, who appears to have escaped captivity. The police are baffled.

The video goes viral and the town panics. About half of The Girl on the Porch — the good half — is taken up by the police investigation and gossipy neighbors who are looking to cast blame for the mysterious girl’s fate, whatever it might have been.  Intermittently, we learn of events that might either be threatening or misperceived, some focused on the Tuckers: a footprint outside a window, a man who seems to be paying undue attention to the Tuckers’ daughter.

The second half reveals the fate of the girl in the video. The story then focuses on the wife of a main character who, along with the police, begins to suspect that her husband may have been responsible for what happened to the girl.

While The Girl on the Porch sets up an intriguing mystery, the mystery’s abrupt resolution leaves too many threads untied. The resolution gives the impression of a story that was written on the fly by a writer who eventually realized he had no idea how to end it. Fortunately, this is a novella, so I didn’t feel that my relatively brief investment of time in the story was entirely wasted. I haven’t read anything else by Richard Chizmar, but given the novella’s first half, I’m sure he’s capable to stronger work.

RECOMMENDED WITH RESERVATIONS