I’ve been a horror fan for as long as I can remember. The genre is full of boundless creativity with barely any literary restraints that can contain it. There are only so many ways you can kill someone (I hope), which makes it exceedingly difficult to find something very original in a crime novel. But that is not the case when it comes to great horror.

This is where authors like Nick Cutter and Andrew F. Sullivan come in. Their twisted and warped imaginations have conceived of a deeply disturbing new book, THE HANDYMAN METHOD. As I was reading this gripping tale, I was constantly drawn to comparisons like Stephen King’s THE SHINING or some of the domestic/haunted house-themed horror novels written by Bentley Little. The premise may seem familiar, but trust me, the end result won’t be.

"THE HANDYMAN METHOD is well-written modern horror, and Cutter and Sullivan never fail to miss an opportunity to chill and repulse simultaneously."

There’s a secret at the heart of every marriage. This is the thought that for some inexplicable reason enters the mind of Trent Saban. He and his wife Rita, a highly successful attorney, and their 10-year-old-son, Milo, have arrived at their new dream home. Or so they thought. The house is part of a new development where they are the only occupants in sight, and to say that the place is a bit of a fixer-upper would be a gross understatement. Trent claims to be up to the challenge, though he has never considered himself to be especially handy.

That all seems to change when Trent finds The Handyman Method, a YouTube channel that focuses on home improvement. The DIY instructor --- a pleasant, bearded gentleman named Hank --- is able to walk Trent through his first refurbishment project. The trouble is that Hank’s influence does not seem to end at just home improvement as he seeks to improve everything in Trent’s life. Trent quickly becomes the top protégé of a dark and sinister life coach whose true intentions will rock your world, no matter how astute a follower of supernatural stories you are.

Trent needs to fill a void in his life as he is currently jobless, and the tasks that Hank has in mind for him seek to do just that. We learn about the experience known in the family as the Incident, which propelled Trent into the ranks of the unemployed. He took down an angry ex-employee seeking to do harm to others with a hammer at the law firm where both he and Rita worked. He is now on a lengthy leave to heal mentally and physically from this horrifying event, and it looks like his new duties at their beat-up residence may prevent him from returning.

When Milo is affected not only by his father’s dangerous madness but also by the evil presence in the house itself, crazy things start to happen. Milo kills his beloved pet turtle, replacing its innards with building items that Trent is using around the house for his DIY projects. Hank is more than happy to have another member of the family involved in his nefarious schemes and is able to get to Milo via the personification of a character from a children’s show.

Milo is nearly killed by his father in a gruesome passage, and Rita has no choice but to abandon Trent while she brings her son to the hospital. All alone, Trent has nothing else to do but get drawn deeper and deeper into episodes of The Handyman Method, even as he realizes that Hank is not what he claims to be. I seemed to be on the same wavelength as the authors; at one point, they compare Trent and Hank’s relationship to that of the supernatural bond between Delbert Grady and Jack Torrance in THE SHINING.

THE HANDYMAN METHOD is well-written modern horror, and Cutter and Sullivan never fail to miss an opportunity to chill and repulse simultaneously. There is a fascinating backstory that explains what is behind the evil of the home, as well as some unexpected plot twists. I have been a longtime fan of Cutter’s work, and though I was not familiar with Sullivan, I plan to rectify that. The Acknowledgments tell a great story about two authors with a lot of mutual respect who built a small idea for a horror tale into a near-classic chiller that you won’t soon forget.