The work was included in the short fiction collection The Brigadier and the Golf Widow (1964), published by Harper and Row.
Mr. Ogden is intrigued with the residence, named Broadmere, which presents an array of tell-tale clues concerning its former long-term renters, the Greenwoods, who just recently occupied the premises.
Mr. Ogden discovers empty whiskey bottles discarded behind bookshelves, under the piano bench, and concealed outdoors on the property.
In a conversation with the property manager, Mrs. Whiteside, Mr. Ogden extracts from her information concerning Mr. Greenwood's business and domestic affairs, while plying her with liquor.
Purely by coincidence, Mr. Ogden encounters Mr. Greenwood at a bar in Grand Central Station, whom he instantly recognizes from a photograph at Broadmere.
"[14] Tim Lieder notes the parallels to The Scarlet Moving Van but notes that the narrator is pursuing the harbinger of doom instead of ending up at the same dinner parties[15] Literary critic Lynne Waldeland recognizes a theme common in Cheever's work, "that people leave their presences in rooms and houses.
"[18] Literary critic Samuel Coale writes: The straightforward and dispassionate prose that of Cheever's style underplays the developing horror of Greenwood's legacy ... His apparent objectivity and calm are maintained throughout but only seem to increase the unhealthiness of [Ogden's] transformation ...[19]Coale adds that Cheever's "controlled and calculated" chronicleing of Ogden's descent exposes its sinister character.
Patrick Meanor writes: "The Seaside Houses" is a story that traces an Icarus-like fall from a condition of ignorance into knowledge that permanently alters the [Mr. Ogden's] naive view of life ...
The conclusion of the story finds an alcoholic Ogden [who has] entered the fallen world in which he and his new wife, who resembles a whore, inhabit another, but much seedier, seaside house ..."[21]