It is always an unpleasant surprise when an author you though had considerable talent turns out a novel that is a ringer. Bentley Little, with several successful novels and a Bram Stoker award to his credit is a writer I would normally believe was a dependable writer of inventive horror. But his latest work, The Association, badly misses the mark.

The plot is quite straightforward. Barry Welch, a horror writer, and Maureen, his wife, a successful tax accountant, have decided to escape their Southern California urban lifestyle and move to the gated community of Bonita Vista, Utah. One of the things that make Bonita Vista special is that it is on unincorporated land, and, as such, has great latitude about its rules and bylaws. Considerably more latitude than Barry and Maureen ever could have expected.

Unfortunately, from that little tidbit of description, one can pretty much guess the entire plot. For some 400 pages, the Welchs go from one confrontation with the Association to the next. The Bonita Vista board of directors moves from dirty tricks to mayhem and beyond in an ever-escalating and predictable whirl of sadistic behavior. From premise to grand finale, Bentley Little seems fixated on endless repetitions of the same plot device. The Welchs attempt to deal with the latest confrontation, a sense of hope is allowed to develop and is then smashed down by the next malicious application of the rulebook. At a certain point (about page 100) I found the reading excruciating, and had to force myself to finish that book.

Perhaps Little created The Association out of a desperate need to fulfill a publishing contract. My personal theory is that he was driven to write this as an attempt to get even with his own association. Whatever the reason, I'm afraid many readers will find this novel a great let down. Little himself seems to have been half-hearted in the writing. Even obvious opportunities to generate scares and physical horror are barely exploited. Outside of the limbless 'stumpies' that wriggle through the woods occasionally, there is nothing that is horrible or frightening. Little could have done better, even with the shallow plot with which he chose to work. Instead, we are given a work where the strongest reactions will be frustration and pulse-pounding tedium.

--Marc Ruby