His Father's Son - Bentley Little

Disappointing. Bentley Little has a knack for surrealism, and some of his books (e.g., "The Store") are fantastic novels that focus on an everyday thing or event spiraling into an abyss. This book is NOT an example of the author's best work. Steve Nye is an everyman that receives a call at work one day that his father has been committed after unexpectedly attacking his mother, and as Steve visits his dad in the hospital, dad whispers "I killed her." The novel gets pretty fragile at this point as Steve decides that dad was a mass murderer, and Steve opts to continue in his dad's footsteps by killing a bunch of people. Unfortunately, the decisions are usually arrived to in the scope of a day or two, and just don't make sense, even if Little is trying to show that the character is falling into madness. The saving grace is that Nye is a budding horror author, so the reader is treated to several of Little's short stories within this book. Pick up one of Little's "The" novels, but skip this one.