Rating: 
Summary: Little's second book scores big on scare-factor
Review: Little's second book shows of things to come. Not an overtly gory book, but he layers the suspense and fills the book with paranoia about everyday common place things.
Little weaves dark comedy into this tale about an evil mailman who has come to Willis, Arizona after their old mailman commits suicide. Strange things start to happen with the mail and I won't give it away. This book reaches out and grabs ahold of by the throat.
Little-ites will see characters fleshed out and small-town america represented well here. If you live in a small rural area, you need to buy this book.
This was the second book I read after Dominion and it made me a lifetime fan of this great writer.
Rating: 
Summary: My favorite Bentley Book
Review: Loads of fun with lots of inventive scenes, characters you care about, and not overly descriptive (unlike the ramblings of Stephen King - at least his newer work). I would love to see this movie! I highly recommend this book - my personal favorite of Little's work. You'll never look at a mailman the same again!!!
Rating:
Summary: Fairly convincing,but (like life) doesn't always make sense.
Review: So far I have read only three of Little's novels - "The Store", "The Mailman", and "The Ignored" - but I think I'm beginning to see a pattern to his work: a community of some sort that, to begin with, appears quite cosy and friendly, and some entity from outside - the chain store or the new mailman, in two of these two novels - intrudes, and gradually begins to subvert the people's way of life and destroy their sense of community. ("The Ignored" doesn't quite fit this pattern.) Things start to go wrong. It's only little things to begin with, which hardly attract anyone's attention; but, as time goes on, these little things that are not quite right get bigger and bigger. People increasingly show signs of unease and anger, but they seem to partly acclimatize to the new order of things, a little like the proverbial frog that, if heated in water slowly enough, boils to death instead of leaping out of the warming water. This may account for why people don't take the action one would normally expect, such as going to higher authorities about obviously wrong things, if the local authorities won't act - or, if they do try to appeal to higher authority, they seem to give up quickly after hitting the first bureaucratic obstacles. This lack of action in the face of trouble is a point that this and other books by Little may be criticized for. Indeed, characters seem to rationalize the events, thinking up reasons why things are not so wrong after all, and saying the strange events are just a coincidence - but they can't accept this entirely, and seem to dissipate their fear by lashing out at each other, instead of following up with higher authorities; this gets bad enough to rip the entire community to warring pieces. Little does mention the malaise that sweeps over the entire town of Willis, so the possible criticism about not doing enough about things does not seem entirely justified; I think Little was aware of this, and made it an intrinsic part of the plot. He appears to depict characters as accepting this as part of the new status quo and not doing as much about it as you might expect, as if the very fabric of reality has changed, and perhaps he deliberately used this to create a surreal atmosphere as the society he's writing about gradually decays. Little seems to construct his whole story around a very specialized situation - the sinister mailman - and builds up as much as possible on aspects of the mailman's work or attributes. The mail service (in its increasingly twisted manifestation) seems to be a microcosm around which the whole story revolves - quite effectively, I think. The whole weird scenario is on the whole fairly convincing, although perhaps some of the more bizarre elements towards the end of the novel creak a little, as if the limits of the edifice are strained a little too far. I think the elements that hint at a supernatural influence - that is, unexplained strange events which definitely violate laws of nature - sometimes seem a little less convincing, but it didn't stop me reading on with interest. It is probably far more difficult to write a story where the supernatural mingles with the ordinary, than to write a story which right from the start is frankly based on supernatural premises. But I couldn't help wondering if the story might have been a little better if the author had left out events of this sort, but developed every possible horrific aspect of the mailman's activities to the hilt. What about the problem that the mailman apparently has no motive for his actions? Well, looked at in isolation, many of his acts seem to make no sense whatsoever - but if you look at it overall, it seems to me that he was an embodiment of evil: everything he did was designed to put fear into people, to divide them from each other, to turn them against one another. He appeared at times to be a psychic vampire who lived off the emotional energy of other people's fear or pain or suffering. But he was also a mailman, and apparently nothing *but* a mailman, who embodied the spirit or essence of the postal service (a postal service gone wrong), but appeared to do nothing other than postal work - so he could only use the mail to wreak his evil. And so it was appropriate and quite logical that the people of Willis turned his techniques against him, and used the mail to destroy him - and indeed, because he appeared to be nothing more than a mailman, this probably would have been the only way they could destroy him. The book does have a lot of loose ends, and fails to explain many bizarre things - perhaps rather more than I would like. But I suspect that's just the way Little writes, and perhaps he intends to illustrate the fact that in real life things are not usually resolved neatly, with all loose ends tied up. Perhaps he's telling us that evil itself ultimately doesn't make sense. Personally I prefer a bit more explanation, and I think it is just brilliant when someone like Dean Koontz is able to build up a truly weird situation (see "The House of Thunder", "Sole Survivor", or "Lightning"), and milks every drop of suspense and fear out of it - but at the end he is able to give a completely satisfactory and convincing explanation for everything that's happened. In this I feel that Little is a bit behind Koontz - but that is perhaps only a matter of taste. With a few reservations, I think Little has portrayed his basically improbable situation quite convincingly, and the book certainly keeps you reading, which is a fairly stiff test for a good novel.
Rating: 
Summary: Good story. Let down ending.
Review: Sorry : - ( Up till the end this is a good story. My only question is Mr. Little what happend to the ending ? It just droped out. It left me with ( OK now what).
Rating:
Summary: THE MAILMAN- ANOTHER OUTSTANDING BOOK BY BENTLEY LITTLE
Review: The Mailman is without a doubt one of the most original horror novels in my opinion. Benley Little can make ABSOLUTELY ANYTHING horrifying- even a mailman!! I read the Mailman in one sitting- extremely suspenseful and scary!! Find this book and buy it!!
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Summary: A Special Delivery Of Terror!
Review: This book is one of Bentley Little's most suspenseful and terrifying novels. It is like a rollar coaster ride-- it starts out calm and serene, it gradually builds up in intensity, and then it simmers down at the end. Ok, here's how the story goes. The local mailman committs suicide, and no one can figure out why. Then the new mailman comes to town, and he is strange looking, with pale skin and red hair. The mailman's clownish appearance does not mask his intentions for long. He starts out with delivering very good mail to the residents of this small town, but the good news quickly turns bad, and the schoolteacher, Doug Albin, quickly realizes just what the menacing mailman is up to. The mailman starts delivering goodies such as nasty letters from long lost friends, body parts, and even long lost letters from people who are dead, that make it seem as if they will come back to the town. This novel culminates with the terrified townspeople chanting," No mail, no mail!". Don't let the seemingly calm beginning of this novel fool you, this book is a real chiller!
Rating:
Summary: Odd.
Review: This book started with a wonderful begining, it ended, though, with too many questions left unanswered. I hate when authors do that.
Rating:
Summary: CREEPY!!!
Review: This book was Very Very Weird. I really didn't get the plot, but it gave me the creeps; which is most important.
I could actually picture each chapter in my mind because the description is so vivid. Little does a good job of describing.
Rating:
Summary: CREEPY!!!
Review: This book was Very Very Weird. I really didn't get the plot, but it gave me the creeps; which is most important.
I could actually picture each chapter in my mind because the description is so vivid. Little does a good job of describing.
Rating:
Summary: I knew that postal employees have been scary,but...
Review: This is contemporary horror at its finest.Bentley Little has a way of taking the most ordinary and commonplace thing,the mailman and his mail,and turns them into things to be feared.That's the way he scares his readers-by turning the commonplace into the terrifying.I have been recommending Bentley Little to fellow horror readers,just as I am suggesting this book to you.Read it with the lights on...and make sure you don't collect your mail alone!!!
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