Download The House of Canted Steps (tc) djvu

I have read quite a few of Gary Fry’s novels and novellas and I know what I like about his writing. First, he really knows how to create a mood. Tense. Brooding. Unsettling. It gets to you as you read. Makes you apprehensive for the characters and builds tension which is critical in dark fiction and suspense novels. The House of Canted Steps is certainly no exception. A creepy haunted house story in a Hitchcock style. Slow build. Building to a no holds barred finale.

The second thing that I enjoy in his Fry’s work, and I think that he does it as well as anyone and much better than most, is to let us in on the thought processes of his main character. Fry tends to tell his stories exclusively in first person perspective, which for some writers can be quite limiting since you leave so much of the story beyond the perimeter of your narration, but with Fry it works well because of the way that he does it. From the very beginning of the story we are inside the main character/narrator’s (Mark) head, following every thought, including his own reasoning and rationalizations as he weighs and performs every action. These thoughts ARE the story to some extent. Exceeding well done, in my opinion. Horror stories, good ones at least, are about real characters in unreal situations and you have to connect the story to the real world or it won’t have much of an effect. In this novel, I think that Fry completely nails the dynamic of divorce with child(ren), new spouses/significant others, jealousy, loss, and all of those related feelings. I found Mark to be completely believable and totally bought into him as a character, to the point that later in the book, when things get more and more off kilter, that I found myself very annoyed with him, wondering why he was doing certain things, until I realized…….well, you might want to read the book to see what I was about to say.

I have read several other of Fry’s works, all printed by Darkfuse—which in my opinion is publishing a fine line of dark fiction from a variety of new and seasoned authors.

The House of Canted Steps is a short horror novel about a haunted house.

Here's some information about the characters: The main character is Mark Cookson, who's a divorced real estate agent. His ex-wife is Gayle, whose new man is Justin. Mark and Gayle's son is Lewis.

In the beginning of this novel Mark goes to a house, which is owned by Eric Johnson. Eric wants to get rid of the house as soon as possible, so Mark decides to sell house. Mark has a strange feeling about the house, but he thinks that he only imagines things. The house is soon sold to his ex-wife, who's looking for a bigger house for her new family. When Mark hears about what's been happening in the house, he's terrified because his son, Lewis, will be living in the house... and things get worse when Lewis sees the Blood Boy.

There were some rough spots in this novel. For example, the prose was a bit awkward at times, but - to be honest - that didn't bother me much, because it added a bit of roughness and edginess to the story.

The best thing about this novel was that it managed to portray modern stepfamily related problems without preaching. Gary Fry wrote easily and convincingly about these problems. The characters were realistic and believable, and the conversations between characters (especially between Mark and Gayle) were also realistic. I liked the prologue and the epilogue very much.

In my opinion The House of Canted Steps combined horror and mystery elements in a nice and enjoyable way. I think it's good Gary Fry wrote a short novel, because additional pages would've probably ruined this compact story. Considering that The House of Canted Steps is Gary Fry's first novel, he's done a pretty good job with all the elements.

If you like short and entertaining horror novels, The House of Canted Steps will be of interest to you. It's good and harmless horror entertainment for a dark autumn evening.

Gary Fry's first novel, The House of Canted Steps, was a very good, longer piece of fiction by him. That being said, I still prefer his novellas, like Emergence or The Respectable Face of Tyranny. Perhaps those works of fiction seemed more streamlined overall, and moved along a bit faster. But I really like his prose: it's typically British, of course, but nowhere near as dense as, say, Ramsey Campbell's. All in all, a very good first effort at novel length by this fine writer!