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.

I was really impressed by the development of the main character in this novel. I found myself feeling sorry for him yet really disliking him as well. The conclusion of the book was intresting and left me wondering what truely had happened. Reminded me of the Twilight Zone television series of my childhood. Well worth a read!

I read this as a result of Stephen King's recommendation in Entertainment Weekly. I can see why King liked it. The protagonist is a writer and, without giving too much of the plot away, finds that his writing has power... specifically, his writing of letters has power. King had a similar plot all the way through his "Dark Tower" series.

Two major problems I had with this book:

First, the ultimate bad guy turns out to be something too close to Stephen King's "IT" (another reason why King liked the book, I suppose). The "Ultimate" bad guy was ultimately disappointing, just as it was in "It".

Also, the main character in the book is a major a-hole. By his own admission, he's at least neutral on the subject of the morality of what he's doing. Sometimes he's remorseful about his evil deeds, but mostly throws up his hands and says "Whatever". All that made it hard to be either sympathetic or root against him, which again made the ending less than compelling.

Hook, line and sinker, I was eating this book up like a fat kid in a cake shop. It was a slow burn and nothing really happened until the midpoint of the novel and yet I could not put the book down. Once the action starts there was no letting up or break to catch my breath and it was so Bentley Little, the absolute bizarre and nightmarish. I also loved the Easter eggs. Jason was a great character. I loved to hate him. Excellent writing as always.

‘Dispatch’ weaves an engaging story about Jason Handford who has a special gift whereby he can achieve results by writing letters. Soon, he becomes obsessed with writing letters or rather, he feels like he has no control over his desire to write and in the process, he realizes there’s a bigger force out there and what lies ahead is dark and unknown.

First of all, I was very interested in the storyline and I’m glad it didn’t disappoint (for the most part). It’s great that Little kicks off the story with Jason as a ten-year-old before proceeding to his teenage and adult years. This helped to give a great insight into Jason’s background such as his unstable home life, what drew him to write and how things gradually but eventually spiralled out of control. It’s evident that even at a young age, he was already aware of what girls in general found attractive, knew how to lie and had some sort of psychological grasp on things. Basically he was smart, not necessarily academically but he knew how to get what he wanted.

Jason isn’t a particularly likeable character. He enjoys writing complaint letters merely to get a reaction and especially receive free stuff – meals, tickets etc. He abuses his uncanny ability to get what he wants. He’s selfish and doesn’t care about the implications of his actions. Besides that, he has no qualms when it comes to getting rid of people that he dislikes or is unable to tolerate. In a nutshell, he’s cruel, cold and calculative. Oddly enough, I couldn’t dislike him. I found him to be a great writer as well as someone who’s calm, detached and again, smart.

Little’s writing style appealed to me as he got straight to the point yet he knew how to provide descriptions. As a result, you can imagine the places and people, you can feel the atmosphere in different situations and at the same time, it’s a very breezy, enjoyable read. The book wasn’t exactly scary though there were moments where if you think carefully about what was happening, they were sort of scary. What was fantastic was the build-up to the point where Jason got caught up with the mysterious company that’s recruiting him. There were also some unexpectedly funny bits especially the ones about some of his dreams.

Somewhere around the last third of the book though, the story took a slight nosedive due to the terribly disappointing confrontation with the Ultimate Letter Writer. It was over too quickly and the whole battle seemed too easy especially as the one he’s up against is supposedly powerful. I think it would have been better not to have a showdown and instead make it such that he becomes consumed by writing to the point where he loses any trace of personality he has, or something along those lines. Something that’s horrifying without being too in-your-face about it.

Overall, ‘Dispatch’ was a very fun read despite the letdown as stated earlier. Great storyline, intricate details and thought-provoking content.