Line #47 Creator/BentleyLittle


1	[[quoteright:347:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/bentleylittle_1885.jpg]]
2	Bentley Little is a writer of the horror genre. He's known for high levels of {{gorn}} and pitch-black comedy.
3	----
4	'''Bentley Little's books, in order, are:'''
5	* ''The Revelation'' (1990)
6	* ''The Mailman'' (1991)
7	* ''Death Instinct'' (1992) (writing as Phillip Emmons) aka ''Evil Deeds''
8	* ''The Summoning'' (1993)
9	* ''The Night School'' (1994) (re-released as ''University'' in 1995)
10	* ''Dominion'' (1996)
11	* ''The Ignored'' (1997)
12	* ''Guests'' (1997) (updated and re-released in the U.S as ''The Town'' (2000))
13	* ''Literature/TheStore'' (1998)
14	* ''The House'' (1999)
15	* ''The Walking'' (2000)
16	* ''The Association'' (2001)
17	* ''The Return'' (2002)
18	* ''The Policy'' (2003)
19	* ''The Resort'' (2004)
20	* ''Dispatch'' (2005)
21	* ''The Burning'' (2006)
22	* ''The Vanishing'' (2007)
23	* ''The Academy'' (2008)
24	* ''His Father's Son'' (2009)
25	* ''The Disappearance'' (2010)
26	* ''The Haunted'' (2012)
27	* ''The Consultant'' (2015)
28	* ''The Handyman'' (2017)
29	* ''The Bank'' (2019)
30	* ''Gloria'' (2021)
31	* ''DMV'' (2023)
32
33	His short story “The Washingtonians” was adapted into an episode of ''Series/MastersOfHorror'' in 2007. His novel ''The Consultant'' served as the basis for the [[Series/TheConsultant2023 streaming series of the same name]].
34	----
35	!!This author's work includes examples of:
36	* AbusiveParents - "Life with Father" features a couple of girls who live with their father who is extremely obsessed with recycling everything they use, eat, and create. [[spoiler: He is so obsessed that he forces the elder daughter to help him "recycle his seed". The elder daughter gives herself up to keep him from harming her younger sister.]]
37	* AlienGeometries - At one point in The Consultant, the antagonist, Regus Patoff, [[spoiler:sends a fellow consultant to his otherworldly corporate office, where there's numerous hallways and misaligned doors without end.]] Shows up in other books as well, generally to indicate malign supernatural influence. For instance, the interior of the First People's Bank in ''The Bank'' is shown to be [[BiggerOnTheInside larger than the lot it occupies]].
38	* AmbiguouslyHuman: Many of his antagonists are people of uncertain origin and obvious supernatural nature who may or may not be human. Some of them might have started out human, while others were probably always [[HumanoidAbomination whatever they are]].
39	* AncientConspiracy - Occurs often. "Colony" reveals that [[spoiler:America never won its independence from Britain and still answers to the Queen. Kennedy was assassinated for not following orders.]] Perhaps this fact has to do with...
40	* BeethovenWasAnAlienSpy - ..."The Washingtonians" revealing that George Washington was a murderous cannibal.
41	* BlackSpeech - In ''The Vanishing'', this sounds normal to a character who discovers he can read it (thanks to [[spoiler:unknowingly being a [[HalfHumanHybrid descendant]] of the race of monsters who originated it]]), but when he finishes reading it aloud, the people around him inform him he's been screaming like a wild animal. Even trying to read in a whisper isn't enough to lessen the language's cacophonous effect. Also, speaking it makes plants grow.
42	* BlessedWithSuck - The short story "Estoppel" puts this spin on a variety of RealityWarping. The protagonist's ability is that anything he says out loud about himself becomes true. As a result, he has to be very very careful about what he says, lest he accidentally rewrite his (and the world's) history in disastrous ways or [[ShapeshifterModeLock trap]] himself into a form incapable of speech. And that's without even getting into the issue of talking in his sleep.
43	%%* BloodyHilarious
44	* BrownNote - One of Little's ''Hot Blood'' anthology stories features a code of numbers that [[spoiler: causes anyone who looks at it to experience a crippling orgasm]]. The military briefly considers using it as a weapon to use against enemy nations.
45	* CorruptCorporateExecutive - Newman King, founder and CEO of the eponymous retail chain of ''The Store''. Whereas the average CEO causes suffering as a side-effect of their ruthless pursuit of profit, King and his organization go out of their way to cause completely unnecessary suffering ''on top of'' the side-effects of his ruthless pursuit of profit. The company's corporate motto might as well be "ForTheEvulz." The Store sets up shop in small towns, buys the local government and puts small business owners out of business, like a relatively normal company might. But then it also does things like [[spoiler: buy up the town's utilities so it can spy on people's phone calls and e-mails, murder small business owners, force employees to go out and beat the homeless, stock child pornography and other bizarre, illegal products, whore out female employees, sic zombies on people, trick a man into having sex with his own daughter and send his wife the videotape of it, etc.]]
46	** The insurance agent(s) in ''The Policy'' fits this trope. So does Regus Patoff, the eponymous antagonist in ''The Consultant''.
47	* CreatorProvincialism: As small New England towns are to King and small Northern California towns are to Koontz, small Southwestern towns are to Little, though he occasionally sets his stories in Californian suburbs as well.
48	* CreepyChild - Though the antagonist in ''The House'' is said to be some sort of demonic entity, she appears as a 10-year-old DepravedBisexual.
49	** The 10-year old in ''Evil Deeds'' who is identified as an ''idiot savant''- a learning or mentally handicapped person who excels in one particular area. Unfortunately for those who encounter him, his specialty turns out to be inflicting pain and death upon others.
50	%%* DeathOfAChild - Frequently.
51	* FanDisservice: ''The Store''. At first you think his description of the protagonist's silent tryst with the mystery woman in Dallas is {{fanservice}}... [[spoiler: until he discovers via videotape that said woman was his eldest daughter. Whether or not she remembers it is left intentionally ambiguous.]]
52	* ForTheEvulz -
53	** ''The Store'' is about a Walmart-esque retail chain that goes far out of its way to be as oppressive and cause as much unnecessary suffering as it can.
54	** ''The Association'', ''The Policy'', ''The Academy'', and ''The Consultant'' all do the same with an HOA, an insurance company, a charter school, and an tech/software development company, respectively.
55	* {{Gorn}}: Big time. Little is also notable for not just using visceral gorn (ie blood and guts and death); to make situations more disturbing and horrible, he will happily utilize the gorn equivalents of toilet humor (toilet horror?), FanDisservice, HotterAndSexier (except it's anything but), social interaction, and so on. In the Little horror rainbow, blood and guts is just one of the colors he'll paint with.
56	* HumanoidAbomination: A number of these show up. Probably the most obvious of these is the cup hu girngsi from ''The Summoning''. While called a [[OurVampiresAreDifferent vampire]], it is not undead, but rather an ancient and evil ''thing'' that was never human to begin with.
57	%%* ImAHumanitarian - "The Washingtonians"
58	* TheLittleShopThatWasntThereYesterday - ''The Store'': A nice little patch of land turns up bulldozed one day. Despite a dead guy under some knocked-over trees, the eponymous store is built and all kinds of horrors, mundane and supernatural happen. Anything can be bought, if you ask the right questions. From the oddly possible, powerful firecrackers for a nickel, to the insanely impossible, such as a video game called 'N*** gerKill' (not censored) . Eventually the whole place goes cockeyed, the villains seemingly defeated but...a small farmer's market several hundred miles away terrifies a traveling couple.
59	* MageSpecies: In ''The Walking'', witches are a subset of humanity who possess the hereditary ability to perform magic. [[AmbiguouslyHuman Isabella]] is implied to belong to a ''different'' MageSpecies than the other witches in the story - she is immortal and feeds off the power of other witches, but it's never made clear if she is a witch who made herself immortal or [[HumanoidAbomination the last of some primeval race of witch-eaters]].
60	* MarsNeedsWomen - ''The Vanishing'' centers around the modern descendants of 19th-century couplings between humans and a secret race of monsters who, despite being hideous 8 foot tall MixAndMatchCritters who speak in BlackSpeech, have a practically supernatural sexual appeal that makes them irresistible to humans. As a result, they don't need to chase or abduct human women or men; the humans tend to seek them out, usually just for a quickie, but sometimes going on to abandon their families to go [[DidYouJustRomanceCthulhu live amongst the monsters]].
61	%%* NightmareFetishist - Many a character in his works.
62	%%* PredatoryBusiness - ''The Store''. A large corporation places "The Store" in the protagonist's home town and things go downhill from there.
63	* ProtectionRacket: The insurance company in ''The Policy'' is in fact one of these, with a supernatural twist. The AmbiguouslyHuman insurance agent offers policies that unfailingly protect against whatever the policy is for, even things that an insurance company shouldn't be able to do anything about, like criminal conviction. If anyone refuses a policy or fails to pay for it, the thing that policy protects against ''will'' happen to them. People eventually get so beaten down that they sign up for whatever the insurance man offers them, but [[MortonsFork at some point the policies become too much for them to pay for and the company destroys their lives when they run out of money]].
64	%%* RapeAsDrama - Happens quite a bit, especially in ''University''.
65	%%* ReligiousHorror - "The Revelation".
66	* RuleOfScary - Somewhere between the cult of women who [[CargoShip have sex with a tire iron]] once used by Creator/JamesDean and the humanoid figures in trenchcoats who are faceless except for their huge disembodied grins, you'll realize that absolutely none of the horrifying, insane things that happen in his novels make the least bit of sense; your best bet is to simply assume that the evil...'' [[EldritchAbomination whatever]]''...that's causing it is powerful enough to [[RealityWarper warp reality and do whatever the hell it wants]]. Even making that assumption, most of it still comes across as lunacy. ''Extremely creepy'' lunacy.
67	* SexualKarma: Subverted in ''University'' (a.k.a. ''The Night School''). The two student protagonists are among the "good" minority on the titular campus. However, whenever they make love, the evil force suddenly takes them over and they have rough, dirty sex that leaves them very sore and often bleeding. Even at the end, [[spoiler:after the campus is destroyed, they're still "infected" and continue to enjoy a kinky BDSM-style sex life]].
68	* SnuffFilm - A snuff ''show'' appears in "The Show". It ends with the protagonist [[spoiler:discovering that his mother has willingly signed up for it as a way of committing suicide due to her unhappy marriage.]]
69	* StepfordSuburbia - Bonita Vista, the Utah gated community in ''The Association'' ruled over by a truly [[DisproportionateRetribution Draconian]] homeowner's association.
70	* TheTitling:
71	** ''The Summoning''
72	** ''The Walking''
73	** ''The Burning''
74	** ''The Vanishing''
75	* TornApartByTheMob - In ''Dominion'', Maenads are eventually revealed as the main antagonists for the first half of the story, during which they tear their victims to shreds and conspire to reawaken Dionysus.

Context Creator / BentleyLittle