Rating: 
Summary: It seems Mr. Little has become comfortable......
Review: ..with the title of "satirist." Puh..leeeeze, he is no more a satirist than I am the Pope. After reading The Policy, I can safely say that what he has definately become is a horror writer for the teen market, but, injecting mature gore and sex into his very juvenile tales. He once showed great promise as a horror writer for all ages, but, he soon discovered a "target audience" and he is giving them exactly what they want, and they apparently are clamoring for more of the same. His ability to make a reader over the age of 21 laugh, get goose-pimples or be shocked faded a long time ago, and he keeps hacking away with the same absurdity with every new novel. There were no surprises, no intelligence or no satisfaction with this tired routine that he called "The Policy" this time around...except maybe to his chosen fanbase. I bet the well respected authors who praised him in the beginning wish they could take their names and blurbs off of every future book of his. He should currently be filed along with the work of R.L. Stine or Christopher Pike...with a warning sticker announcing his gore and sex that accompanies his childish books. Yawn.
Rating: 
Summary: now this is horror
Review: About 20 years ago Stephen King wrote a short story called Quiters Inc. about an organization that promises to end it's client's smoking. The organization was run by the mafia and it had violent ways of making clients quit. The Policy starts out in that theme but very quickly gets worse(in a good way). The mafia would be a blessed relief compared to the insurance company of this novel. The hero and his hapless friends are offered insurance policies from agents who are foul mouthed, and vicious. They learn that turning down the offers lead to horrible events like ending up in jail or finding out that relatives have been killed or that a newborn child has been ruined for life. The tension and the horror keeps going up and when Hunt and his wife realize that the company and it's agents aren't human it's a brilliant, spooky moment. And then Bentley Little ruins it. I won't give it away but the ending was incredibly weak. Did Little lose interest in the book or did he just run out of steam?
Rating: 
Summary: Unfortunately, I feel it is coming true!
Review: As someone who is having a heck of a hard time keeping up with insurance payments--house, car, health, life, etc...this book really brought out the paranoid delusional in me! I've followed Bentley Little for years and he's one of my favorites, but this book scares me. Insurance is what makes our world go around, and if you can't pay up, you pay the price! Super scary!
Rating:
Summary: Unfortunately, I feel it is coming true!
Review: As someone who is having a heck of a hard time keeping up with insurance payments--house, car, health, life, etc...this book really brought out the paranoid delusional in me! I've followed Bentley Little for years and he's one of my favorites, but this book scares me. Insurance is what makes our world go around, and if you can't pay up, you pay the price! Super scary!
Rating: 
Summary: Again
Review: Bentley Little almost always writes an interesting tale and characters that hold you through a story. This story is typical Little work. Interesting as well as creepy, the story is similar to The Association, the Store, or The Mailman. Little takes something that is part of almost everyone's daily life and puts a sinister slant on it. He builds the story slowly, allowing things to get real spooky, and then whips through an ending in the last 2 chapters. Good read, but Little seems to once again fall very flat for the ending.
Rating:
Summary: more skewering of the corporate world
Review: Bentley Little did his best work in "The Store" - a novel about an evil corporation taking over small towns all over America - focusing in on one branch in Arizona. Arizona, to Little, is like Maine to Stephen King. "The Store" is a satire on what Wal-Mart is really doing to rural America - with a Mephistophelian twist. Since "The Store", Little has jumped on other American institutions - the mail, homeowner associations, and in this most recent installment, insurance companies. Yes, these stories are formulaic, but they make you think, and the subject matter is scarier to the modern reader than conventional ghosts and bogeys because they are situations we all must deal with - though not in such over-the-top ways.
His best work comes from taking these nuisances of modern life and with great imagination, taking them to extreme conclusions, but his weakness lies in how to end the stories. His endings fall short because the protagonists must confront the core of these evils and dispel them to provide a satisfying ending for the protagonists we have grown to care about.
We know that reality doesn't work this way - we don't win when we fight City Hall in real life. Even Little is aware of this when he has his characters think about the fixes they're in, but he goes and neatly wraps it up anyway. The solutions are campy but the subject matter is still heavy hitting and very thought provoking. I love his books - and I love the way this man thinks!
Rating:
Summary: Excellent Book!!
Review: Bentley Little has done it again! This is an awesome book. Once you start reading it, you cannot put it down! It will scare the wits out of you. Ever wonder where all that money goes to when you pay your insurance dues? I do! A good read....highly recommended!!!
Rating:
Summary: You're not in good hands with The Insurance Group
Review: Bentley Little is a terrific writer who seems to have virtually patented his own special niche in the horror genre; his subject matter resonates with the reader on a very strong level, really drawing you into a world where a certain cockeyed corporate mutation is wreaking increasingly disturbing havoc on the local area. Unfortunately, Little oftentimes proves incapable of pulling off a truly satisfying ending, and The Policy suffers from this one seemingly common affliction amongst his work. A storyline that has remained tangible and credible in a weird sort of way in the face of growing surrealism and impossibility eventually falls into the pit of implausibility, marring an otherwise fine and somewhat addictive read. In The Policy, Little has selected the insurance business as his source of otherworldly evil. It's a choice that makes sense; virtually everyone hates having to deal with insurance companies and their increasingly silly demands, and I know I have had moments in life wherein I seriously wondered if insurance companies are not actual forces of evil in the world. Even a quick Internet search will turn up untold numbers of insurance nightmares told by men and women used, abused, and even threatened by their insurance companies. Thus, The Policy has at its source a storyline that readers will have no trouble accepting. Our primary window on this world is Hunt Jackson, a man who moves back home to Tucson almost on a whim after his divorce. He quickly sets out to find a job, gladly accepting a tree trimming position for which he is overqualified, and a place to settle down. He gets reacquainted with an old childhood friend and his family, meets a special lady, and rapidly begins building a brand new life for himself. The only thing between Hunt and a state of bliss is a series of mishaps and the disturbing insurance issues they give rise to. Insurance phone representatives treat him with unbelievable disdain, the company refuses to pay for damages in many cases, and the actions they do at times take are little short of insane. One day, a mild-mannered door-to-door insurance salesman pops by, and Hunt and his new wife soon find themselves transferring more and more of their insurance needs to this new salesman and The Insurance Group. To say the salesman becomes a menace doesn't even begin to explain things. It soon becomes apparent that, whenever you refuse to buy additional insurance for increasingly odd things, something along those very lines occurs to make you regret your decision. Hunt and his wife have to keep buying whatever the salesman recommends in order to avoid personal harm and injury, and the very same thing is taking place in the homes of Hunt's friends and acquaintances. Those who say no to the strange little insurance man live (or not) come to regret those decisions. Some of the things that happen to individuals and families who turn down a new kind of insurance are beyond belief, and I won't spoil the story by delineating them here. I'll give you a hint on one of them, though: think dentistry. The madness grows so much that, however ridiculous the insurance recommendations are, our characters have little choice but to accept the impossible and sign on the dotted line. The only hope they have is to bring down the insurance company, a formidable task indeed. As I indicated, the ending just doesn't work for me. It takes the story in a strange new direction, it feels alien to what has come before, and there are too many shortcuts taken for my liking. Overall, though, the book is an absorbing read that will have you wondering if such awful things as presented here are actually possible here in the real world - after all, you should never underestimate the power and malevolent potential of insurance companies.
Rating:
Summary: Little's finest and funniest since The Store
Review: Bentley Little is the best horror novelist out there today. He makes the average and mundane aspects of modern society like shopping, the mail system, schools, suburbia, etc. take on sinister dimensions like no other writer can. Over the last decade and a half he has consistently churned out a novel every year and in my opinion has produced the best horror fiction since 80's-era King and McCammon. For those of you who were dissapointed with last year's The Return, fret no more, Little is again in fine form here. Following a recent and nasty divorce, Hunt Jackson decides to leave California behind and settle back into Tucson AZ, the neighbourhood he grew up in. Once in Tucson, he moves into a rented home, finds himself a job trimming trees and reunites with Joel, his childhood pal. Hunt is also introduced through Joel and his wife to a young woman named Beth and the two hit it off immediately. After his messy divorce, things seem to be finally looking up for him. The first sign of trouble comes when Hunt discovers one day that one of the windows of his car has been cracked, an apparent act of vandalism. He calls his car insurance provider and is put through a unanimous male operator who takes down his information.The operator then asks Hunt for the approximate time of the incident. When Hunt is unable to give him a precise time, the operator becomes rude and impolite and starts singing in a twangy southern accent, "Half past a monkey's [tail], a quarter to his balls." Shocked beyond comprehension, Hunt hangs up the phone. This will be his first bizarre experience with insurance companies but certainly not his last. In the next few weeks, he and Beth(now living together) and others residents in the Tucson area are offered increasingly bizarre insurance coverage, at a deadly cost if refused. When Hunt refuses an agent's wrongful imprisonment insurance he finds himself arrested and kicked in jail for molesting a nine-year old girl, a crime he didn't commit. When Beth refuses the agent's dental insurance since she already has a plan through work, she finds herself with horrible steel-plated teeth. When a neighbourhood couple refuse the agent's earthquake insurance, they wake up one night to find the floor of their house shaking and soon after their entire home in a pile of rubble. Anyone who has already read some of Little's work will know him to be one of the more obviously liberal and left-leaning horror writers out there. The Policy has his usual philosophising on modern society, chain stores, class divisions, capitalism. Little's focus in this novel is especially on how privatization and deregulation facilitates large companies(such as insurance companies) being able to control more and more every aspect of our lives. As Little points out, almost everything of ours seems to need insurance: our teeth, our health, our cars, our homes, our lives. Little is not only a master of horror, but also a master comedian. The protagonist's first phone call to the insurance company is one of the funniest things I've ever read and anyone who has ever called an insurance company will find it very amusing as well. Did you find yourself clutching your bowels and laughing uncontrollably while reading The Store and The Association and wanting more? Then settle down and read The Policy. You're in for a treat.
Rating:
Summary: Familiar, but still thrilling
Review: Bentley Little is to horror fiction what AC/DC is to hard rock...you know what to expect, and each time it hits you between the eyes without mercy. This tale is a good companion to THE ASSOCIATION. Once again Little throws his characters into a truly macabre situation...this time they are all suffering at the hands of a mysterious insurance company! Some scenes are quite grim, and others will give Little fans the same thrill they had with such classics as THE STORE and UNIVERSITY. This is Little's 14th novel, and I must say that though his style is getting familiar, the author still manages to make THE POLICY stand on its own. Most fans should love this...new fans, this is as good as any of Little's better novels to start with.
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