The Monster Man of Horror House by Danny King

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I hadn’t heard of the author yet. Good thing that’s changed.
The House of Monsters is roughly divided into four sections and contains – that being said in advance – not only hard horror or suspense but also a lot of dry humor.
The old eccentric John is avoided by his fellow men, the citizens of an English small town. The youth, however, doesn’t necessarily avoid him, rather they seem to be after him and terrorize him with their tricks.
Seems there’s someone like John in every little town. The cat woman in her decayed house. Those people who always dress so strangely and leave their property only when they have to go to the stores. The always drunk one-legged at the Inn. Perfect targets for childishly grim jokes and harassment. It’s the same with John.
But at some point, John will have enough. He decides to take countermeasures.
Soon he has the young punks in his cellar, and then the actual story really takes off. What happens now could become some snuff porn with drills and rusty saws at this point and according to my previous description – but this expectation couldn’t be more wrong.
No one is cut up, tortured or hung upside down from the ceiling to bleed out. It’s not about how the kids escape from the dungeon of an old lunatic. No, John “punishes” the adolescents by telling them stories from his life.
From here on, the supernatural comes into play. I won’t speak about the individual stories that are cleverly connected by the frame story. Rather, I’d like to say that everything begins relatively sedately, but then horror and dread intensify as the story progresses. The author creates credible and mostly likable characters with corners and edges and their very own characteristics, which makes empathy much easier.
Of course, this is a spooky/horror story, but that didn’t stop Danny King from putting some dry humor into his work. Right, that’s the way they are, the British. 😉

Thus, there is no hardcore horror waiting for the reader, but horrors of the charming and tongue-in-cheek kind, but without drifting into shallowness or childishness.