The Consultant by Bentley Little

Released in 2015, The Consultant is one of Bentley Little’s more recent novels out of the 30+ released to date.

CompWare’s merger fails and in a panic, its CEO and board hires the consulting firm BFG. The firm has many glowing references, having previously helped many big names. The consultant from BFG, Regus Patoff, announces an internal study for the restructure. The plot follows Craig Horne, a senior staff member of the programming department, as he tries to survive the process…

Fundamentally, The Consultant is just like any other contemporary horror fiction: a present-day setting with some evil force of unknown origin—in this case in the form of a person—that wreaks havoc and a few ordinary people as main characters who must deal with said evil force.

Like Bentley’s other works, dark or black comedy is a major ingredient, which is a perfect fit for the corporate and office satire. And as mentioned in the review of University, one of the author’s earlier works, he has a gift for this type of twisted comedy, setting up for the weird but still managing to hit the reader with the absurdly perverted.

Structurally, it is like a typical novel with 42 chapters spanning about 477 pages. I have not read every one of his novels but compared to at least some of them, the chapters are shorter which makes the book easier to manage for those readers who find novels too long.

As is the norm, novels can have a lot of filler although this arguably has less. The author sometimes has scenes without the main characters, featuring only minor characters that he uses only once or twice. This novel seems to have fewer of those but enough to help keep things fresh.

Whilst the plot progresses steadily, one could argue it is uneventful not in the sense that not much happens but rather that Craig and his fellow workers lack agency. This is, of course, presumably deliberate given the nature of the premise: there is not much people like Craig can do, either they keep their heads down or risk losing their jobs. Although that is realistic, more overt attempts at resistance would make the plot more interesting.

This problem is largely compensated by the increasingly threatening actions of Patoff and the satire. At first, it’s the jokes that most would expect. For example, there are pointless meetings which anyone who has worked in a corporate environment can relate. Works such as Dilbert make fun of that.

Patoff also somehow manages to send an unrealistically large number of emails (that are not mere one-liners). That’s also an obvious joke… except that he also turns up at people’s homes asking if they had a chance to check their email.

The author is, of course, more creative than the abovementioned but I will refrain from spoiling. As expected, employees begin to die in freak accidents and Patoff’s control of the company gets broader and harder like, for example, having security cameras everywhere.

The ending is typical of the genre and although it is not dissatisfying, the resolution and denouement could be longer and use a little more exposition. Ultimately, along with the relatively short chapters and decent pacing, the dark comedy and satire mask whatever problems and are what captivates and entertains.

---

Be sure to subscribe to our mailing list so you get each new Opinyun that comes out!

---