The Bank
by Bentley Little
Item Weight : 14.4 ounces
Paperback : 376 pages
ISBN-13 : 978-1587677854
Product dimensions : 5 x 0.95 x 8 inches
Publisher: Cemetery Dance Publications (April 16, 2020)
Book review for The Bank
by Bentley Little
Review by Jeani Rector
For those of you who already have read books by Bentley Little, you know his style. Little takes normal people and thrusts them into abnormal situations. That is the beauty of his work: his characters can be you or me, and his plots are very plausible. We can easily put ourselves into the shoes of his characters, which make his books more frightening, because we imagine the events happening to us. It’s a little too close to home for our comfort, upping the ante of the outcome.
And it works. Little knows how to scare you. In fact, Stephen King has publicly called Little “the horror poet laureate.” And Little continues to earn that high praise.
The Bank is Little’s newest novel. Who hasn’t felt like a “little guy,” a person who is at the mercy of a big bank’s decisions on their lives; who often wonders why there are so many fees for such less service? Who tries to talk to their local bankers about their financial situation, only to walk away with the feeling that the bank has no heart? That to them, you are not a person, but a number?
In the small town of Montgomery, Arizona, a store next to a bookstore is suddenly being converted into a bank. Bookstore owner Kyle Decker and his son, Nick, notice how quickly the bank is constructed. And things get odd: weird sounds come from Kyle and the bank’s shared wall, and how come the bank appears to be so much bigger on the inside than it appears on the outside?
The First People’s Bank gives gifts to the community to bribe them into loyalty. Except there are strings attached, and some of those strings are deadly. Like The Body Snatchers, the townspeople begin behaving differently. They look the same, but aren’t the same. And bad things start to happen.
Many people say this book tends toward satire, and Little does have a razor-sharp wit. Contrarily, I found this book to be pure, old fashioned horror. I couldn’t put it down, which is high praise from me, since I read a lot of horror, some good, some not-so-good. The Bank is not just good--it is great. I highly recommend it.
If you have read Little’s previous novels, you know you have to get The Bank. If you have not read any of his novels, you are truly missing out on a great experience.
Oh, and if my review is not enough to convince you to read this book, Stephen King tweeted this about it on January 17, 2020: “I just got an advance copy of the new Bentley Little novel, The Bank, and it goes right to the top of the pile. Mr. Little writes horror novels unlike anyone else. He’s so damn good he’s practically his own genre.”
Find the book HERE
About Bentley Little
Photo by Wendy Li
Bentley Little was born in Arizona. He received a BA in Communications and an MA in English and Comparative Literature from California State University. He currently lives in Fullerton, California with his wife and son. He also writes under the pseudonym “Phillip Emmons.”
Little has stated on several occasions that he considers himself a horror novelist, and that he writes in the horror genre, not the "suspense" or "dark fantasy" genres. He is an unabashed supporter of horror fiction. Stephen King has described Little as "The horror poet laureate."
About Jeani Rector
While most people go to Disneyland while in Southern California, Jeani Rector went to the Fangoria Weekend of Horror there instead. She grew up watching the Bob Wilkins Creature Feature on television and lived in a house that had the walls covered with framed Universal Monsters posters. It is all in good fun and actually, most people who know Jeani personally are of the opinion that she is a very normal person. She just writes abnormal stories. Doesn’t everybody?
Jeani Rector is the founder and editor of The Horror Zine and has had her stories featured in magazines such as Aphelion, Midnight Street, Strange Weird and Wonderful, Dark River Press, Macabre Cadaver, Blood Moon Rising, Hellfire Crossroads, Ax Wound, Horrormasters, Morbid Outlook, Horror in Words, Black Petals, 63Channels, Death Head Grin, Hackwriters, Bewildering Stories, Ultraverse, and others.