Author of adventure/thriller and horror fiction

THE HANDYMAN METHOD by Nick Cutter and Andrew F. Sullivan

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In THE HANDYMAN METHOD by Nick Cutter and Andrew F. Sullivan, a man moves into a new home with his family, only to become obsessed with fixing its many deficiencies and by extension, his own manhood. I picked this one up after reading Sullivan’s THE MARIGOLD, which I thoroughly enjoyed, and after noting it was co-authored by Nick Cutter. I liked this one a lot.

In this story, Trent moves into a new house in an unfinished development with his successful wife Rita and son Milo. Soon after moving in, he notices a crack and turns to Handyman Hank, a YouTube DIY expert and all-around manly guy ready to offer home improvement advice along with his own aw-shucks wisdom about being a real man. As more things go wrong with the house, Trent finds himself immersing in Hank’s increasingly monstrous worldview, producing a horror story reminiscent of THE SHINING, if Jack Torrance were seduced by the toxic form of masculinity in order to solve his insecurities. He discovers he is a pawn, both in an ancient pact and of the house itself.

Some readers wanted more clarity in the narrative and a tidier landing, and I’m not sure I can argue with that, but I didn’t mind. I found the book a perfect blend of the authors’ strengths–Cutter’s fine skill at writing the horror set piece and Sullivan’s deep and provocative ideas that included his take on one of my favorite elements, the idea of a house within a house. Overall, I had a great time with this story. As with THE MARIGOLD, I appreciated Sullivan showing me something I hadn’t seen before along with his writing that again showed solid skill.

Check it out if you’re looking for something new from a haunted house story.

THE MARIGOLD by Andrew F. Sullivan

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In THE MARIGOLD, Andrew Sullivan delivers a weird and bold if sprawling story about a dystopian future Toronto, where rich developers satiate the earth with blood before building and a sentient fungus appears intent on making the city and possibly all of humanity its own. I loved it.

The novel has an ensemble cast doomed to play their parts in multiple, sometimes intersecting storylines. Decadent developers engaging in an ancient blood rite to fuel their real estate empires, public health workers investigating the monstrous fungus, teens probing the underworld to find a lost friend, and more. Through their perspectives, we see a Toronto built on blood, haunted by its victims, and possibly careening toward destruction. The book is sprawling in its scope and struck some readers as slow and a bit bloated, but I didn’t mind. In fact, I loved it for its bold and original ideas, general weirdness, provocative writing, and overall integrity. Sullivan gave me something I hadn’t seen before, and for that alone, he won my respect.

Check it out if you’re into eco-horror and looking for something new and different.

DEVOLUTION by Max Brooks

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An epistolary novel by Max Brooks (WORLD WAR Z), DEVOLUTION tells the story of the Mount Rainier Massacre through interviews peppering the journal entries of one of the people who was there. This one took me a long time to get the motor of engagement started, but once it did, it really roared.

The story begins with a young urban couple moving to a remote eco-community called Greenloop. Here, the residents live close to nature while maintaining all the comforts of the big city. When nearby Mount Rainier erupts, all these comforts evaporate. And worse: The eruption has forced an animal migration, including a particularly monstrous, hungry, and previously hidden type of beast: the thing we call Bigfoot.

The narrative plays out primarily through the wife’s journal. Over time, we get ongoing snippets of interviews from experts, park rangers, and others. The two work together pretty well, with the journal bringing us there as the events unfold and the interviews adding context, background, a look at the bigger picture of the Rainier eruption, and so on.

Not gonna lie: It took me a while to get into this, so much so I put it down a while ago and only recently came back to it. For one, I didn’t find the protagonist particularly likable to a level I could invest. It’s kind of the point, as she’s been pampered by civilization and eventually transforms under the pressure to adapt and survive, but the preamble describing Greenloop and daily life there through her eyes wasn’t particularly engaging for me. Besides that, I have an odd bar for willing suspension of disbelief. As with other epistolary works, I had to get past the mental hurdle that she spent an enormous time writing in her journal so that I could just accept the convention and go with the flow.

Once Rainier blows its top, however, things get very, very interesting. The community slowly realizing its predicament, the transformation to self-reliance, the advance warnings something horrible was coming and all of its reveals, the drive to survive, and the various tactics the residents use to defend themselves against an incredibly powerful and ferocious predator were all pretty much perfect.

By the end, I can’t say I fell in love the way many readers did–the book has more than 8,000 reviews on Amazon with an average 4.4 rating, and I can see why–but I did like this one a lot. It’s a clever, realistic, and informed take on Bigfoot; an excellent thematic view of survival and adaptation; and overall a very strong survival horror story.

DESERT CREATURES by Kay Chronister

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I recently enjoyed Kay Chronister’s DESERT CREATURES, a novel about a future slow apocalypse due to environmental catastrophe.

In this story, toxic rain has driven humanity into the desert, where clever businessmen have set up a religion based in Las Vegas to establish and maintain their power and wealth. In this dangerous and evolving world, Magdala, a child, struggles to survive and wants to make a pilgrimage so that a saint will heal her clubfoot, a deformity where the foot is turned inward. The novel follows her life in a world that is slowly dying along with a heretic priest who may be able to perform miracles.

This is an odd one, I have to say that first. The environment is hostile but also evolving, developing new strange life forms and imposing escalating pressure on human biology and society until it is barely subsisting and seems ready to simply join the desert itself. There is a lot of religion. The narrative jumps protagonists and then forward in time, with a lot of wandering and frustrated hopes and no clear theme, making the story feel a little disjointed with some readers likely wondering, what’s the story here, and where is this all going?

Yeah, okay, but I liked it. It’s less one thing than a collection of things, and the mosaic they formed caught me. The new desert life in particular was interesting and weird, I liked the adaptation of Christianity to cowboy saints and casinos, the ongoing degradation of society is pretty bleak, and the story drags you through the dirt and dust while maintaining a mythic feel to it, with some fantasy elements as strange as the landscape.

Overall, I admired what Chronister was trying to do here in this ambitious, different novel. It didn’t quite come together for me as a reader to make it a favorite, but I enjoyed the aspiration and what I received, enough to say, hey, take a look and see if this one might be for you.

THE DRIFT by C.J. Tudor

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C.J. Tudor’s THE DRIFT is a terrific apocalyptic thriller with clever construction, a cascade of page-turning thriller elements, and a strong thematic focus on how crisis brings people together and tears them apart.

The story follows three main narratives, each with its own protagonist. Hannah, a student at an elite Academy, awakens on a crashed bus that was evacuating the school to a secure mountaintop facility called The Retreat due to an outbreak of a viciously persistent disease that is slowly destroying the world. Former detective Meg awakens with several strangers on a cable car suspended above a snowstorm; they were on their way to The Retreat, but the power is out and they’re stranded. And Carter, who works at The Retreat, struggles to survive with a small band of other survivors, but there may be a murderer in their midst.

Tudor proves herself a thriller master, as each of these storylines quickly portrays clear, easy-to-remember characters, sets up a locked room and ticking time bomb, and then bombards them with an avalanche of obstacles, problems, and escalating threats. By the end, we get to know their backstories and why they’re here, how the narratives tie together, and what it’s all adding up to.

I liked almost everything about this book. The pandemic is handled in an interesting way, the thriller style keeps the pages turning at a swift pace, there is some engaging reader detective work about how the storylines tie together, and there’s a solid thematic focus on how crisis unites and then breaks societies. As a fan of apocalyptic fiction, I’ve always been interested in how people would react to something like say zombies. I’ve always been a believer that humans are primarily cooperative animals and that this trait helped us reach the top of the food chain. This cooperation, however, is based on the principle of reciprocity–if I do for you, you do for me. Eventually, that principle may break down, and then it’s every person for themselves.

One potential downside for readers, particularly apocalyptic fiction fans, is there isn’t a lot of backstory on the state of the world and the pandemic itself. Almost all the events in the book happen in isolation, with the story’s focus being on these characters and their immediate survival. And if you’re new to thrillers, be prepared for a veritable kitchen sink of sudden obstacles.

Overall, I really enjoyed THE DRIFT and will be keeping an eye out for future works by this author.

FLICKER by Theodore Roszak

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Theodore Roszak’s FLICKER is a tour de force journey through the history of cinema and Hollywood, sprawling and lavish and finely written with believable, expert detail. While I quibbled with the beginning and end, it’s a hell of a ride, blending film theory, history, and an ancient conspiracy theory through the lens of an unsung horror movie director.

The book is the memoir of Jonathan Gates, a student at UCLA who seeks out foreign films for their titillating erotic honesty. After he meets Clare, the proprietor of an underground theater who is a genius critic in the making, he begins a love affair with both her and film. This leads him to the discovery of Max Castle, an obscure German horror director from Hollywood’s golden age whose abominable B movies hold a certain power. Eventually becoming obsessed with finding and documenting Castle’s work, he ends up on a journey that reveals a secret history of film, Hollywood, and an ancient religious conspiracy.

What a sprawling, interesting novel this is. Roszak certainly takes his time building his ideas, showing himself to be a master of pacing, the slow reveal, and how to tease out a massive and bizarre conspiracy theory that on the page feels utterly real. Engaged by the colorful characters, smart language, central mystery, weird eroticism, and thick film theory and history, I couldn’t stop reading. I found myself as invested in Max Castle and going ever deeper into the larger mystery as the protagonist was. I absolutely loved the idea of movies being planted within movies within movies. This is the kind of novel where the ideas are as intriguing as the story. The characters are wonderfully colorful, from pure inventions like Zip Lipsky, Castle’s belligerent cameraman to a fictionalized Orson Welles and John Huston.

As to the quibbles, the protagonist is pretty passive, he’s really there to observe, which works well but took some getting used to. The novel also took some effort before I found myself investing in it; the writing and story comes off a bit pretentious at the start, and it takes some time to get going. Similarly, the ending didn’t really tie off in a satisfying way. With so much great stuff in between, though, yeah, these were just quibbles for me. This is a terrific novel. As a novel of ideas, it’s actually quite epic.

Recommended for readers with the kinds of brains that eat language, readers who love film, and readers who love a great sprawling mystery.