The late Oakley Hall is no longer a literary household name, but he unquestionably remains an author’s author ... may put one in the mind of James M. Cain, but its characters and settings foreshadow Hall’s subsequent literary love affair with the West as a contemporary rather than a historical setting ... Hall may be gone, but his haunting influence lives on. Read So Many Doors, and you will understand why.
Somewhat dated ... The fuse lit to ignite a James M. Cain–style atmosphere burns slow, and the clashes between Jack and V often come off as hysterical melodrama. The two leads prove less interesting than peripheral characters ... provides plenty of fascinating detail about the lives of the 'cat skinners' who handled the big excavating and paving equipment of that era. In this early novel, he may have created his own subgenre: Road Grader Noir.