by Elizabeth Massie Haunted houses have long been the stuff of horror fiction. The iconic, isolated mansion on a hill with looming towers, mysterious passageways, and the standard ghosts is featured in countless stories, novels, and films. It takes a truly creative imagination to come up with a house, or houses, that are equally unnerving and yet seemingly more ordinary. These houses might be ones we’ve visited – or even lived in, ourselves. Bentley Little has that truly creative imagination and puts it to excellent use in his novel The Handyman (Cemetery Dance, Oct. 2017). The story begins with Daniel Martin, a real-estate agent, showing a couple a house that is for sale. The couple notes the shoddy, off-kilter construction, and the husband says it reminds him of a “Frank House.” Daniel is shocked to hear the term. It resonates uncomfortably in his memory. When he asks the husband to explain what he meant, the husband says his mother lives in a house with similarly poor construction – pipes don’t quite fit, flooring that is uneven, paint jobs that were never finished, a leaky roof, and so on. The handyman/contractor responsible for the shoddy work was a fellow named Frank. While the husband thinks it’s rather funny to be looking at a second “Frank House,” Daniel feels a turn in his gut. He recalls two other creepy “Frank Houses” from his childhood – ones that not only had the recognizably, nauseously poor construction, but one in which bones were found in the walls, strange smells emanated, and family tragedy followed. Bentley Little then sends the reader along with Daniel and the crew from a ghost hunter television show on the trail of the seemingly-charming but, in truth, evil and powerful Frank (whose last name changes frequently), only to discover that there have been countless clients (or rather, victims) of this so-called handyman. And they discover that Frank’s projects are part of a much larger, supernatural, terrifying effort born of his time in the jungles of Vietnam. Little is a master at creating everyday characters with whom the reader can readily identify, and then leading them slowly but surely toward the danger and, finally, shoving them headlong into a unique, chilling hell. I found The Handyman to be one of Little’s best, maybe in part because I’ve been in houses that remind me of a “Frank House” (I think my great-grandparents lived in one!) But in a bigger part because he is a master of pacing the terrible. He knows how to tighten the thumbscrews of fear until the reader’s heart and mind are racing as much as the poor souls in his novels. 
 TO HELL AND BACK: THE KANE HODDER STORY
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