Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #225050 in Books
• Published on: 2003-08-19
• Released on: 2003-09-02
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 400 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Similar in style and structure to Little's previous books (The Association, etc.), this chilling tale revolves around a handful of tightly knit characters living in Tucson, Ariz.-including recently divorced Hunt Jackson, his new wife, his co-workers and his best buddy from high school-who are continually harassed by a pesky insurance salesman. The salesman tries to convince them to purchase bizarre policies protecting them from the law, their bosses and even death, and if the clients refuse, inexplicable consequences usually follow. When Jackson turns down additional insurance, for example, he is incomprehensibly charged with child molestation and thrown in jail. Then he buys so-called conviction insurance while behind bars, and the alleged victim is killed in a car accident. One of Little's primary strengths is his ability to create believable characters whose lives are disrupted by a seemingly mundane yet supernatural force. Those characters then emerge as heroes by single-handedly defeating that force-in this case, an omnipotent insurance company that is bent on destroying the world one policyholder at a time. That said, by this point in the author's career-this is his 14th novel-Little's approach, while still enjoyable, has become predictable.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Customer Reviews

INSURANCE IS A RISKY BUSINESS...
This author, one of the best in the horror fiction genre, has a knack for taking the mundane things in life and turning it into something out of one's nightmares. In this book, the author decided to focus on insurance policies. How more mundane can one get?

Newly divorced Hunt Jackson decides to leave California and return to Tucson, Arizona, where he grew up. When he gets there, one of the first things he does is call his insurance company after a minor car accident. What happens during that call to his insurer is weird and unsettling, but Hunt puts it on the back burner as he puts his mind to looking up old friends and rebuilding his life now that he back home. Hunt's childhood best friend eventually introduces him to Beth, one of his wife's co-corkers, and, almost immediately, Beth and Hunt become an item.

When Hunt returns home one day, he discovers that his house is totally vandalized. He contacts his insurer to make things right, but the insurer ends up doing something totally bizarre. Again, an insurer acts in a totally weird and unsettling manner. So, Hunt moves in with Beth, who is practically his soul mate, and they start living together. There is something odd, however, about Beth's house, as the guest bedroom seems to have a life of its own. Then they get a visit from an insurance agent, and everything begins to spiral downward for them.

Hunt, however, is not the only one having odd experiences with insurance companies and their representatives. His friends are also having similar experiences. Some of the experiences are more than unsettling. They are downright scary and begin to have tragic consequences. It is almost as if the insurance industry may have made a pact with the devil. The experiences are such that they make them all wish that they had never signed on the dotted line.

Fans of the horror fiction genre will certainly enjoy this book and the twist that the author puts on the mundane act of buying insurance. It is a highly creative and imaginative horror yarn.

The Policy
My first experience with Bentley Little was The Collection of short stories. I enjoyed that a lot, but this. I'm speechless. Dull......Annoying....Check it out of your library, don't waste money on buying it. It was entertaining, but not great. It just seemed to get more and more ridiculous. And the end, of my gosh, the end. Boring...lame...no action. Overall, entertaining, but not worth buying or reading again...or going out of your way to read at all.

More annoying than scary
I'm a Bentley Little fan and I bought this book because of all the rave reviews I read here but I have to say I was quite disappointed. I love scary books and have read several of Bentley Littles, The Store, The Town and The House, which were good books. This book went nowhere. It just kept repeating itself. And I agree with one of the other reviewers who pointed out the things in the story that ended up going nowhere and had nothing to do with the story, such as the "haunted" guest room and the x-wife spotting in Tucson. I kept waiting for something to happen with her. She ends up dieing and that was that. I didn't feel frightened of this insurance guy, just annoyed. I found myself speed reading near the end just to get through it. This definitely was not one of his better books and I would not recommend it to anyone who likes to be scared because like I said, it's more annoying than scary.