Dispatch

Bentley Little's writing scares the crap out of me. Highly recommended!

Weird as usual but pretty good.

Dispatch started off as a coming of age story, as only Bentley Little could possibly pen one. I enjoyed the first half much more than the second, but still found the last half quite engaging. I would have marked this one as one of my top five Little books, but it seemed to me that the second half of it was sort of a rehash of several other of his novels that I liked better. I will say that it could be the fact that I have read five or six of Little's books in the last several months that might color my overall rating.

One of my favorite parts of Dispatch was that it was written in first person, which Little does not do very often. When he does choose to employ this technique, it works very well. I really liked the narrator's voice, even though he was pretty much an evil bastard that didn't give two shits about anyone else in his life but himself.

Jason Hanson is in elementary school when he begins to realize that there is something special about him. He has a horrible family; his mother, father and brother are the epitome of shitty relatives. Jason has a crush on his Asian teacher, and when she tells the class that she is instituting a pen-pal program, Jason decides to take part in it.
At first, he doesn't want anyone else to know, especially because he wants to be pen-pals with a girl, which is embarrassing at his age.
He chooses an oriental girl to correspond with because he is so infatuated with his teacher, he figures if he makes friends with someone of the same nationality, eventually his teacher will take note, and more than likely, fall deeply in love with him.
As he goes along, he does some great things, and also some terribly evil ones as well. Jason's letters really get results.

We follow Jason's story as he grows up and realizes his talent in life seems to be writing letters.
As he enters junior high and high school, he begins writing letters to restaurants and other merchants, claiming he has had terrible experiences, securing free meals, free tickets to amusement parks, etc.
Then he begins to understand that he can do pretty much whatever he wants due to the power of his written missives, and he commits some acts that make him even more unlikeable.


At college, Jason meets Vicki, falls in love, and ends up becoming a father. Everything goes great until he gets caught writing letters by Vicki, who thinks that Jason has stopped writing them.

Over the years, Jason's letter writing proves time and again to produce results, good or bad.

Another thing I enjoyed was when Jason described the bands and albums he really enjoyed. He had tastes like mine! I noticed this in other books by Little, as well. He seems to have great musical taste.


The book really takes a drastic turn after the midway point. At this point, I will stop giving details, because I hate giving or receiving spoilers. Suffice it to say, the book takes a turn for the bizarre, yet it does not seem very original. There are elements from several of Little's other books that are explored again here - i.e. The Mailman, The Store, and The Ignored - which is probably my favorite so far, besides The Association).

Although it did tread through familiar Little territory, I was unable to guess the end of this one.
The end is pretty damn good, just so that you know.

I would recommend this book to anyone who is looking for something different.

This is the kind of Bentley Little novel i like. Dispatch starts out with a kid in elementary school who joins a pen pal organization for extra credit. He begins writing to a Japanese girl and lies to her to make himself seem cool to her. Things get slightly out of control when he convinces her to send him a picture of herself naked. As things progress in the novel, and as the character gets older, he realizes he has a talent for writing complaint letters and getting back free things when others get nothing. It is pretty obvious that bad things are going to happen in this book because of the way the main character abuses his power. Like most of Little's novels, the story expands and expands, making you wonder just how far he will go with it. In most of Little's novels, I love that I have absolutely no clue how he is going to close the story and Dispatch is no exception. It is a brilliant novel that is mostly suspense and I can't think of any way it could be better.

While we probably could have done with a 100 page summary of the first 200 pages, the second half picks up steam and it is hard to put the book down. I think that more physical descriptions of the characters would have been nice, especially the main character. Overall, decent book that reads quick.

3.5 stars; my 2nd favorite Bentley Little book so far, after "The Store". "Dispatch" offers more food for thought; you will never look at letter writing or mailboxes the same way again!

I'm beginning to like this author quite a bit--they write good, old-fashioned horror with outstanding and imaginative plotlines. In this novel, the narrator discovers that his letters have the power to shape people's opinions and influence their actions. From there, the action takes the reader to a place that is satisfying (you get to meet the monster) and twisted. The ending is truly horrific.

Unlike some of the readers of this book who didn't find it to be that great, I found the blatantly odd storyline to be very compelling. This is an example of Bentley Little churning out his usual brand of horror and adding a sense of weirdness to it on top of that. Not overly suspenseful and a bit lacking in conflict hold it back a bit. Yet as far as I'm concerned the " Twilight Zone" aura evident in this novel caught my interest and kept me reading, not minding that it wasn't scary, gory or whatnot.