I really wasn't sure how to categorize this book. It's a little horror, conspiracy, fiction, ..... It was also too long & a little boring. Jason is a guy who likes to write letters. Starting at a young age he is a master craftsman for writing letters. Throughout his life he wrote to a pen pal, complaints so he could get free stuff, threatening letters to get politicians & policies changed, letters to get people removed from job, movie reviews, music reviews, etc. We go on a journey with him & his letter writing that lands him a job with a nameless company that eventually all he does it write letters day in & day out BUT there is something amiss. The book was bizarre after that and really not worth the read ( )

It was great book. I really enjoyed it all the way though. The ending really disappointed me though, I really wanted it to end differently then it did but that doesn't effect the rating I gave it, I was just upset by the way it ended. It's one of those endings that you have to make up what happens, if it ends good or badly. Jason throw away everything for this Letter Writer thing; his friends, his wife and son. And when he was able to finally get out he had nothing. No house, no family and the only true friend he had left was one from college that didn't even no he was missing. Although it was really the lost of his wife and kid that truly drove him to going to the building to become a serous Letter Writer in the first place. So I don't blame Jason one bit, I blame that bitch of an ex-wife he had.

It had a very slow start and nothing really happened until like page 100 and normally if something don't happen in 50 or less pages I drop it faster than a hot potato but there was something about the book that made me want to continue reading to see what would or if any thing would happen. And the book did not let me down. ( )

The first half of the book was original and engaging. The second half was ridiculous. Way too much emphasis on sexual references that were pretty much uncalled for and added nothing to the story line except to make me wonder why I bothered with the book in the first place.The second half of the book was just plain lame. ( )

Jason Handford has a real gift for writing letters that get results-from complaints to love letters to editorials. Then he's offered a job to do it for a living. It consumes his time, his mind, and eventually, his soul. Jason really should have stuck with freelance. ( )

Dark Characters and Anti-heros


I found Bentley Little's, Dispatch, to be well written and entertaining. However, the first half of the book seemed a bit slow to me. In fact, I put the book down several times - because of the slow tempo and some problems I had with Jason Hanford, the hero of the story - only to come back and try it again later. To Little's credit, the book does pick up in the second half and really gets revved up for the last quarter, redeeming both the storyline and the protagonist.

Let me explain my comments about the protagonist. I guess I'm a little old fashioned, but I like to root for the hero of a story. With Jason Hanford, a person with an unusually persuasive style of writing letters, I found this nearly impossible to do. For the first half of the book and part of the second, Jason exhibits absolutely no redeemable qualities. He uses his friends, hates his family, destroys lives and even kills people, all with no remorse. He even states this several times throughout the book. In the end, he does somewhat redeem himself, and it was for hoping that this would happen that I continued to read. But I did continue to read the book, and that says a lot about Bentley Little's writing abilities. If you like dark characters and anti-heroes, you'll like Dispatch.

- Bob Avey, author of the Detective Elliot series