A Bentley Little novel is like eating at your favorite pizzeria.  You may have mushrooms one night, double pepperoni the next night, and get the urge for a Hawaiian pie the next week (pineapples and ham?  Can you say “nasty”?), but in the end it’s the same cheese pizza, only with different toppings.  Some people may get bored of it after a while.  I, on the other hand, enjoy every slice.

A typical Little novel takes a seemingly ordinary location or situation and gives it a little tweak.  Something BAD taints the air, and bit by bit the many characters separate into two camps….those who succumb to whatever is causing the taint, and those who resist.  Pretty standard fare in the horror genre.  Little has always had a liberal bent to his books (possibly one of the reasons I enjoy his tales).  In the past he has skewered gated communities in The Association, insurance companies in The Policy, and a thinly veiled Wal-Mart in The Store. The evil in his books usually appear as a totalitarian, Neo-con, corporate hive mind.

His latest offering struck a special chord for me.  In my “real life”, I teach at a middle school and when I heard that Little was releasing a book called The Academy, which targeted the recent disturbing trend of schools becoming privatized into so-called charter schools, I knew I would enjoy it.  He did not disappoint in the least, adding his trademark twist to jocks and cheerleaders, parent/teacher relationships, overbearing principals, and after school activities.  Read this book and you’ll soon be having that nightmare where you show late for finals and you’re naked.  I promise not to laugh.

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