House of Danger

Choose Your Own Adventure #15

by R.A. Montgomery, Sittisan Sundaravej (Illustrator), Kriangsak Thongmoon (Illustrator)

WILL THE HOUSE OF DANGER BE YOUR BIGGEST CASE EVER? OR WILL IT BE YOUR LAST?

You are an accomplished young detective with several tough cases under your belt. Then comes a case that is as difficult as it is frightening. An anonymous caller begs for help. But before you can find out more, the line goes dead...

The phone rings again, and this time you are ready. "Hello," you say.

"Help, I need your hel-l-l-lp...."

"Who are you?" you ask. "What is your name?"

"I'm scared," the voice says. "They're after me..." Click. The phone goes dead again. In the few seconds that have passed, your telephone-tracing device has already found the number of the other phone as well as the name and address of its owner: 555-7259, HENRY MARSDEN, 1100 HEDGE BROOK.

If you decide you should go immediately to 1100 Hedge Brook, turn to page 4. If you decide to give your friends Ricardo and Lisa a chance to call back, turn to page 14. YOU choose what happens next!

Genres: Fiction, Choose Your Own Adventure, Childrens, Mystery, Gamebooks, Adventure, Fantasy

144 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 1982

About the author

Raymond A. Montgomery (born 1936 in Connecticut) was an author and progenitor of the classic Choose Your Own Adventure interactive children's book series, which ran from 1979 to 2003. Montgomery graduated from Williams College and went to graduate school at Yale University and New York University (NYU). He devoted his life to teaching and education.

In 2004, he co-founded the Chooseco publishing company alongside his wife, fellow author/publisher Shannon Gilligan, with the goal of reviving the CYOA series with new novels and reissued editions of the classics.

He continued to write and publish until his death in 2014.

Reviews

[Jeffrey Caston · Rating 4 out of 5]

This one was first published in 1982. I don't remember this one as a kid. I picked up this new, updated edition and found it entertaining. I've always wanted to be a psychic detective. Or was it a psychedelic detective? Or is it a detective of psychic phenomenon? Not quite sure. But it was, regardless, a good nighttime read for a few days.

[Paul · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was the only Choose Your Own Adventure book I did back when I was knee-high to a grasshopper. I never continued with the series as I discovered the Fighting Fantasy books were more my speed. I still remember this one very fondly, though, and I think I still have my copy in a box in the attic.

[Haley · Rating 5 out of 5]

THIS. IS. AWESOME. Where have these been all my life? I want to go out and buy ALL of them!

1st:
Score! First try ever, and I didn't have to turn past page 24 to solve the mystery without a single mishap. I single-handedly cracked a case about counterfeiters and holographic monkeys in four and a half hours. I'd make an absolutely awesome detective.

2nd:
Went again, took a more cautious route (ie: I waited for friends so they could be my backup, and I didn't go into the creepy house). This time I went back in time, saved some prisoners from a fire, and then reappeared back in the present day. Yay me!

3rd:
This is addicting. I decided to see what would've happened if I had gone into the hella creepy house from the last time. Turns out, I would have died and also led my friends to their deaths.

If you don't want to read about me literally going through every single adventure in the book, stop reading the review here. I, however, will continue to document more of my wonderful experience.

4th:
I went to the police (boring, I know). They delegated the investigation of a haunted house to me and my bros (Lisa and Ricardo). I went inside, was locked in, confronted by a ghost, decided to be an old man instead of a baby, and died. So I went back, decided to be a baby, lived, decided not to be anyone else, tried to leave, and a ghost swept me off into outer space. So I tried again, chose a baby, decided to be someone else, apparently decided on Genghis Khan, and I guess I never came back. So...

5th-ish:
...I went all the way back to not adventuring deeper into the haunted house at all. Instead, I tried to get back out of the locked front door. In the end, I saved a ghost from eternal damnation. Note to self: always try to escape the haunted house before exploring.

6th-ish:
Again! I left Lisa and Ricardo behind again this time. More fun on my own. Sort of. All that happened was I got a talking chimp locked up in a zoo.

7th-ish:
I am never going to put this book down.
Oops. A talking chimp army killed me and the prof.

8th-ish:
Rewind before my last death and decide I do trust the complete stranger telling me to get into the weird chamber that might kill me even though he refuses to get into the weird chamber himself. Why this is a better idea than not doing the thing, I have no idea. But as a result, in quick succession I...

...Saved an alien.
...Went back, and went with the alien to his planet. Good times ensued.
...Went back, fought and lost to an evil consciousness
...Went back, fought the chimps, and exposed their counterfeiting organization (??)

9th-ish:
This time, from the beginning, I reported a murder (I know. Police again. Boring). I didn't wait for the police to come as backup, though, and I ended up getting recruited by a sketchy underground agency.

10th-ish:
Then I did wait for my police backup. I end up getting Ricardo and Lisa to join me before the cops arrive, and I let the idiots talk me into investing without further backup. We die from aliens. (Twice, because I went back to try something else. That time, we got killed and eaten. At least the first time was just shipped off to another planet.)

11th-ish:
Def waited for my police backup this time. But I also decided not to stop and help an old guy in a trance, and it got me killed. So...

12th-ish:
...I helped him this time even though my friends might be in danger in the meantime. And it turns out it was all a dream. But I still helped catch counterfeiters? But...

13th-ish:
...I tried something less boring and explored after freeing the old man from his chains. Saved the day (sort of) again!

I think the only one I didn't do (I flipped through all the pages at the end) was not help put out the fire when I traveled back in time, which left me to live out my days a century in the past. SO ENTERTAINED BY THIS BOOK (because I'm a child).

[Megan · Rating 3 out of 5]

"The chimps developed these egg-shaped flying machines you see in the garage," says the professor. "They planned to use them to fly all over the world, dropping money from the sky on many countries and destabilizing all of the world's economies -- the ultimate 'gorilla' warfare. After this, they had planned to become the controlling power in the world."

[Benjamin Stahl · Rating 2 out of 5]

I got my ass handed to me embarrassingly fast. Merely for having a sense of adventure. Eff you, Mr Montgomery, and your silly but addictive books. And thank you. I still enjoy them.

[Renata · Rating 2 out of 5]

honestly wtf is up with this house

http://www.frowl.org/worstbestsellers...

[Peter Derk · Rating 1 out of 5]

In an on-going adventure to read one of these, I took a different tack. A real different one.

This one I read aloud to a group of about 75 5th grade boys. No, I didn't have to capture/enslave a group of children as part of an angry quest to actually reach the end of one of these. They were there by choice, or at least as much choice as one gets at age 12.

It was a scout camp, which reminded me of my own days in the cub scouts when we would have our two-day camp that consisted of pitching tents in the shittiest public park in town and doing "activities". I do not enjoy "activities" as a rule. "Projects" are fine, "Doing Drinking" is great, but "activities" almost always involve gluing something cheap to something crappy and then colorizing it poorly. I swear, every time I see some yarn glued to a paper plate I remember one of the best things about being childless and horribly alone.

Anyway, back to the book.

Basically you're a kid detective, hot off a streak of solving some case about a haunted pancake factory or something. I don't know. One of those kid mysteries. Rarely does a child sleuth begin by investigating a suspicious character at a candy store and end up busting up an eastern european prostitution ring. Usually it's something like a guy at the carnival who is cheating people out of cash by using unbreakable balloons at the dart throw or something.

On the newest case you find a suspicious house built on the grounds of a former prison with what appear to chimps acting as guards. Yep. Guardian chimps, which IS suspicious, although that alone seems to be enough to get a posse going. And then it turns out the chimps are mere holograms used to discourage people from poking around too much.

So let me get this straight. You, a criminal mastermind, don't want people snooping, so you figure the best plan is to go ahead and install a hologram generator and to generate fake chimps? Because that will ensure that no one is curious about what the fuck is going on? This would be like me trying to hide the fact that I have a weeping herpetic lesion by coating the entirety of my genitalia with metallic gold spray paint. The thought process behind these books is absolutely boggling.

That said, after my constant failure, a group of 75 12 year-olds, voting on each choice, navigated successfully to the end in about 5 minutes. That's right. This is somewhere around my 10th CYA book, and the only way I've managed to make it to a positive ending is by putting it up to popular vote to a group of kids who moments ago were engaged in an attempt to break the world's record for most armpit farts generated in 20 seconds. Granted, that was my idea, but I digress.

Perhaps these are perfectly pitched to grade school boys. Maybe that's why I can't do it. I've lost some of that boyhood wonder. Although that got me wondering, maybe I never had it in the first place. I don't think I ever wanted to be a child detective. A grown-up detective, maybe. But not the kid version. I wanted to be Spider-Man, not some Kid Spidey. I wanted to be Batman, not Robin. Even as a kid, being a kid felt like bullshit. Like everything you did as a kid was just there because you had to wait a dozen years before you were really capable of doing anything.

That or I'm stupid as fuck.

[Weathervane · Rating 3 out of 5]

Off-the-wall -- and little resemblance of a plot. Some of the endings and paths, though, are just so darn wacky that it manages to be worth the read-through.

Contains both aliens and monkeys. Either awesome or terrible depending on your tastes.

[Natalia · Rating 3 out of 5]

Poznajcie „Złowrogi Dom” - książkę, w której o przebiegu wydarzeń decydujesz właśnie TY! A zakończenia... Są najróżniejsze! Możesz skończyć jako sława w swojej okolicy, przeżyć w podróż w czasie, czy ponieść porażkę, padając ofiarą własnego śledztwa - a wtedy wrócić do początku i zobaczyć, jak potoczyłaby się akcja, gdybyś wybrał co innego! To co, piszesz się na taką przygodę?
🎃
„Złowrogi Dom” R. A. Montgomery był jedną z pierwszych książek paragrafowych, które czytałam i muszę przyznać, że była to bardzo fajna przygoda! Szalona historia i jej nowe warianty, które powstawały wraz z kolejnymi moimi wyborami sprawiały, że szczerzylam się do książki, nawet kiedy okazywało się, że zakończenie nie było jakieś wyjątkowo wybitne - może dlatego, że grupą docelową tej książki są osoby trochę młodsze odemnie! Myślę, że młodszym podpasowałoby też to, że każda z wersji historii jest stosunkowo krótka, a przeczytanie jej zajmuje niewiele czasu!
Ale hej, mimo wszystko naprawdę fajnie się bawiłam i jeżeli szukacie zajęcia dla kogoś młodszego, ale potrafiącego już czytać, to znaleźliście świetne wyjście - zaproście go do „Złowrogiego Domu”, a jestem pewna, że wciągnie się i będzie się doskonale bawił!

[Mary Havens · Rating 2 out of 5]

Juliette wanted to read this and that's fine but.....
The idea is really good but it always ends so abruptly. I guess it's difficult to continue a story arc when you are, literally, choosing the variety of storylines. Still, it's reads like "the chimpanzees slowly stalk towards you (next page) and then a spaceship beams you up and you get eaten by aliens."
Juliette wants to continue to another book and we'll see how that goes. This one seemed to have too much "stuff" squished into it. :)

[Josiah · Rating 1 out of 5]

While the tendency of some gamebook authors to ignore internal plot consistency and logical sequence is unpopular with many fans of the genre, I don't always mind when gamebooks deviate from perfect continuity to allow for a greater variety of experiences and surprises. House of Danger certainly does not adhere to a single path of continuity; once you step foot inside the mysterious glass house from which you received a desperate call for help at your detective agency headquarters, there's no telling what sort of adventure awaits. Will you run up against counterfeiters armed with clever technological diversions designed to afford them cover from the roving eye of the law? Or might the bad guys be a lot more bizarre than run-of-the-mill human desperadoes, showing themselves instead to be not fully human in one respect or another? Is the person of Harry Marsden—an obscure local figure linked to horrors of the Civil War era that center on atrocities of the prison system—somehow still alive, or could his ghost still be haunting the House of Danger? And whether Marsden is man or ghost, are his intentions toward you benevolent...or is his jaundiced eye cast only toward doing you evil?

The Choose Your Own Adventure series has its share of books that feature You as a young detective operating your own agency, with or without the help of friends such as Ricardo and Lisa. These detective books often present some of the more intriguing story scenarios (see Who Killed Harlowe Thrombey? as a prime example), and House of Danger is no different. When a short but panicked telephone call leads you to investigate a strange, modern-looking glass house that historical records inform you was once the site of a particularly treacherous Civil War prison, you're not sure what to make of it. What's more, the man your state-of-the-art call tracing technology identified as the caller, one Harry Marsden, is believed to have died in a fire about a hundred years ago. Could you be dealing with ghosts here, or is the solution to what's going on in the House of Danger less esoteric than that? What will be lurking in wait once you've crossed the threshold of this menacing house built on land that has seen so much death and suffering, as the front door slams shut behind you and contact with the outside world is severed?

Whether or not you choose to enlist the help of Ricardo and Lisa in investigating this mystery, you will find that little makes sense inside the House of Danger. Many threats stalk you within the walls of this peculiar mansion, and you must remain on high alert and think through all your choices carefully if you wish to remain alive. What would be worse, confronting a ghost who wishes you harm and is set on trapping you inside the House of Danger, or coming up against angry, ravenous primates whose fear instincts and razor-sharp teeth could end your adventure and your life in a matter of seconds? And is it better to at least have an intellectual superiority to your animal opponents...or to find they aren't quite as simian as you expect? The twists and turns in the House of Danger are seemingly endless, but you have more than just getting out alive on your mind. You also have a responsibility to solve this case and erase the threat the house and its eerie history pose to the community surrounding it. You have a duty, as well, to the man who called and begged for your help, whoever he may be. Can you help bring peace at last to a place that hasn't known anything of the kind in more than a hundred years?

While House of Danger is undeniably an odd story, filled with events that often feel randomly constructed and are at times confusing, especially when one compares multiple major paths in the narrative, I liked this book. There's a certain inherent suspense to the way a haunted house story works in the Choose Your Own Adventure format, and while House of Danger may not be another heart-stopping thrill ride like The Curse of the Haunted Mansion, it's a good book that provides some enjoyable moments. I would consider giving it one and a half stars.

[Philbeert · Rating 3 out of 5]

‘Read’ it via the cooperative adventure game of the same name.

[Nick Gicewicz · Rating 4 out of 5]

The book was a very good one to read. It was a choose your own adventure book, so it already is good when its that kind of book. This book had a lot of twists, turns, and a lot of suspense deep within the book. My favorite parts of the book are when they ask you what you want to do. It gives you a choice of what you want to do, but it also gives me a hard time to decide which one would be better. I recommend this book to anyone who likes this specific type of genre and also whoever likes adventure.

[Gabriel · Rating 4 out of 5]

It was exciting having super powers and battling bad guys. I think I chose the best ending there was. I would recommend to anyone that likes super hero and choose your adventure books.

[Monika Baumgarten · Rating 3 out of 5]

Whacky and entertaining, though the plot was all over the place. Took one day to explore all the possible paths and discover 20 possible endings.

Some paths seemed more detailed than others with some feeling tacked on for the sake of the book having 20 endings.

When you zoom out of your chosen path and try to look at the whole setting, the book is trying to tap into too many genres - we have time travel, aliens, labs and superpowers which is very sci-fi, but we ALSO have ghosts and the paranormal which is barely connected to the sci-fi routes.

It’s fun when you don’t think too hard about it.

[Catherine Hayden · Rating 4 out of 5]

well it was certainly entertaining! a lot of lore in here that becomes more clear with different endings, although I didn’t read every single path so there’s stuff that is unexplained to me but might make more sense with everything else. I liked the chimpanzees best

[McKenna · Rating 3 out of 5]

I randomly remembered these existed about a month ago and was convinced they were a fever dream. Headed to eBay, found them, ordered a box set and I was instantly transported back to my middle school library in the corner window seat. I loved flipping through all the possibilities and can’t wait to read more from the set!

[Georgia · Rating 3 out of 5]

POV: you’re mob psycho

[Sig]

here’s a choose your own adventure for you guys! tag me and georgia as either aspiring detective or psychic investigator.

[Matthew · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very convoluted but good story
Various ways to die include but are not limited to:

Demons
Chimps
Vaporization
Frozen for alien consumption and
Please see the book for more information on death.

[Amber · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this today to my kids and I suddenly remembered the last time I read it, sitting in my driveway in Connecticut in 1989 in the summer heat, thinking it was the best book I'd ever read.

It's still an absolute banger. Kid detective gets a call from a mysterious voice and traces it to a modern house built on the site of PRISON BURNED DOWN IN VICTORIAN RIOTS, leaving behind underground prison cells and masses of twisted metal. A guy dies in a long driveway. There are murderous chimpanzees. Civil War Ghosts. Aliens who brand you as lunchmeat. There are no dull endings. It's amazing. And kid appropriate, I suppose, in the way that Neverending Story is kid appropriate. As in, it's clean but mildly traumatic in a way that makes you want to do it again and again. Both of my kids, who often have trouble paying attention to story time at night, were RAPT. Arthur (age 5) actually said: "I want to learn to read better so I can spend all day in my room reading these books."

YES. THAT IS WHAT YOU DO.

[Benjamin Spurlock · Rating 1 out of 5]

I thought that I'd enjoy the set-up. I'm a sucker for the young detective facing paranormal situations, and some of the paths did work. But the rest of it... this book underscores one of the problems that early CYOA books had. The nature of the House of Danger's danger changes with each path, often in completely contradictory ways. In other words, there's no way to determine which path is safe or not, what you're in for, or what's going on.

In some stories, that could be used in a positive way, to keep the reader guessing and adding new dimensions to the plot. Unfortunately, in this particular example, it instead just feels like an arbitrary way to get the requisite number of messy deaths.

[Amauri · Rating 5 out of 5]

By far most favorite choose your own adventure ever.

[Daniel]

It has been a long time since I read a Choose Your Own Adventure book. This was a fun one to dip my toes back into the water with (so to speak). One of the fun things about the book I enjoyed was how different the ending were (yes - I did all the endings). What goes from a mystery if you chose one path turns into a spy story if you chose another or a science fiction adventure if you chose a third. A fun book.

[Craig · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another Book Fair score, this one stayed with me for years. The cover was enough to hook me, and when I went back to get it all copies had been sold. I begged and begged the woman to get me another, going back every day until she knew I was serious and ready to shop. She relented and got me a copy, just to shut me up and not because I wanted to read it. Adults are funny that way.

The book still influences me and my work to this day.

[Laura · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this for the nostalgia, and I was surprised to see that the text had been updated to include smartphones and so forth. It's always interesting to see which dated things get left in, such as assuming that the second-person narrator is male. It wasn't a bad update, but it wasn't the walk through memory lane I expected. A fun read all the same, though, and probably a good fit for today's kids.

[Sarah · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a freebie on Kindle - finished all plot lines over the course of a drink. It reminded me of reading these books as a tween, which was kind of fun. Navigation is much easier on the Kindle - with a click of a button you go to the next story segment or back to your previous decision, with no shuffling around in the pages. Good memories.

[Courtney K · Rating 3 out of 5]

Bash is playing it a little riskier now that he's figuring out how these books work. I think we figured this one out pretty quickly. I like when it's more difficult to get a satisfying ending. He isn't as tenacious as I was at the same age, though. I think I've read every ending of my favorite CYOAs.

[Melissa McGhee · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reading this again as an adult is wild. The story was unbelievable and I rolled my eyes a few times but guess what, I STILL loved it!

The anxiety and anticipation was still there throughout each decision and I still got upset when it ended too quickly; so I kept rushing back to my first decision to get a whole new story.

These books will never get old. Highly recommend.

[Elephants · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved choosing the adventure in this story. The atmospheres given were imaginative. There where so many cliffhangers to choose from. You could either rescue prisoners or escape from crazy apes and fire. This house is certainly the most dangerous of all.