tstone
03-04-2006, 08:34 AM
Not alot of experience with insurance companies. Fortunately, my experience to date is positive, but I've heard horror stories. But, we do live in an age where big business has integrated itself into aspects of society it has no business in being. So you end up with priorities and decisions skewed away from the public it's supposed to serve and towards moneyed interests that believe themselves immune from the problems their domination causes.
That's how we get violent revolutionary movements.
In Bentley Little's writing, he writes good n' scary. But he also uses his writing to editorialize against things he believes are out of whack in contemporary America. Big Box retail (The Store), alienation (The Ignored), and so on. He also has all his stories taking place in roughly the same universe, so you see entities, people and organizations recurring all throughout, so it makes a nice continuum, if you follow his works.
Hunt is a man who just got divorced after a long time marriage. It ended badly, as did his job. He just got laid off from Boeing. He ends up following he instinct of the wounded animal and retreats home to Tucson, AZ. There, he finds a rental home and begins looking for a job. He finds one, not in IT, as previous, but as a groundskeeper in the employ of the city. He reunites with a childhood school chum and meets a fabulous woman through him. Life begins looking the best it has ever in a long time. Except that bad things keep happening. And when they do, a very persistent insurance agent shows up, guaranteeing he can protect Hunt from these ills.
Thing is, this character has been showing up all around town, selling people these policies. They DO work, but when they do, they seem to cost someone else. Further, when you refuse him, it costs YOU what that latest policy may have protected you from. I mean, some ridiculous stuff, like employment insurance, legal conviction insurance, etc, you get the idea.
Well, Hunt and his friends become aware that this individual and the organization he works for isn't a normal outfit with normal, mortal resources. And they become determined, after a series of tragedies, to find the truth of this organization and put it out of business permanently.
This books starts like a good horror story should, intro us to a relatively mundane, believable setting, then start the pot boiling on the creepies, until you are exploding from your nickers in nerves. And again, Mr. Little plays well on modern insecurities, and does well in beating up some real world sources of anxiety/irritation.
Good, scary read. Check it out.
That's how we get violent revolutionary movements.
In Bentley Little's writing, he writes good n' scary. But he also uses his writing to editorialize against things he believes are out of whack in contemporary America. Big Box retail (The Store), alienation (The Ignored), and so on. He also has all his stories taking place in roughly the same universe, so you see entities, people and organizations recurring all throughout, so it makes a nice continuum, if you follow his works.
Hunt is a man who just got divorced after a long time marriage. It ended badly, as did his job. He just got laid off from Boeing. He ends up following he instinct of the wounded animal and retreats home to Tucson, AZ. There, he finds a rental home and begins looking for a job. He finds one, not in IT, as previous, but as a groundskeeper in the employ of the city. He reunites with a childhood school chum and meets a fabulous woman through him. Life begins looking the best it has ever in a long time. Except that bad things keep happening. And when they do, a very persistent insurance agent shows up, guaranteeing he can protect Hunt from these ills.
Thing is, this character has been showing up all around town, selling people these policies. They DO work, but when they do, they seem to cost someone else. Further, when you refuse him, it costs YOU what that latest policy may have protected you from. I mean, some ridiculous stuff, like employment insurance, legal conviction insurance, etc, you get the idea.
Well, Hunt and his friends become aware that this individual and the organization he works for isn't a normal outfit with normal, mortal resources. And they become determined, after a series of tragedies, to find the truth of this organization and put it out of business permanently.
This books starts like a good horror story should, intro us to a relatively mundane, believable setting, then start the pot boiling on the creepies, until you are exploding from your nickers in nerves. And again, Mr. Little plays well on modern insecurities, and does well in beating up some real world sources of anxiety/irritation.
Good, scary read. Check it out.