The Consultant

By: Bentley Little

Narrated by: Ramiz Monsef

Length: 12 hrs

Publisher's summary

CompWare is in serious trouble after a promised merger falls through, so they do what other businesses have done to bolster their public image: They hire a consulting firm to review and streamline their business practices.

But there's something strange about the firm they hire - more specifically, the quirky gentleman who arrives to supervise the project: Mr. Patoff, tall and thin, wearing a bow tie, and with an odd smile that never quite reaches his eyes.

In his first interactions, the consultant asks inappropriate questions and generally seems a nuisance. Over time Patoff gains power to the point where he seems to be running the whole company. He enacts arbitrary and invasive changes to office protocol; he places cameras all over the building, causing paranoia among the workers; he calls employees at all hours of the night; and he visits some of their homes and menaces their families. People who defy the consultant get fired...or worse. The employees of CompWare soon realize they're not just fighting for their jobs: They're fighting for their lives.

The Consultant is a biting workplace satire with the horrific touches only Bentley Little could provide.

©2015 Bentley Little (P)2015 Blackstone Audio, Inc.

I Had to Give Up

I'm not quite halfway and I can't take it anymore. The story just gets more and more ridiculous and not in a fun, amusing way. I keep waiting for the big twist and it seems clear it's not coming. I really enjoy workplace satire, but this is more like a bad, low-grade workplace horror story. Add to that the frequent, out-of-context, juvenile sex scenes and it's just not enjoyable.

Workplace Satire ~~~ Crude and very funny.

This book doesn't REALLY fit into any of the typical horror genres. A better description would be workplace satire. Hate your job? Find certain policies and the people who create and/or enforce them to be abhorrent? Is corporate culture complete bullshit? Does your job encroach upon your personal freedom? If you answered "yes" to any of these questions, you will enjoy the humor in this book. (A word of caution: some of the content is downright rank, so pass on this one unless you can laugh off the crude humor.) Regus Patoff is quite the piece of work -- pun intended. There were indeed a few times that I actually laughed out loud at the ridiculousness you'll encounter within these pages. The book was a little longer than it should've been, but I found it quite amusing.

Too weird and unbelievable

Very interesting premise, but the story had too many illogical inconsistencies. I know it was a horror story but it could have done without the gore. The ending was sudden and unsatisfying.

Storyline Weak and Rambling

One of the daily audible deals, and the story sounded potentially intriguing. About half way through the story became fairly disjointed, and it was a struggle to finish.

Excellent narration

The narration kept me on the edge of my seat from beginning to end. One of the best narrations I have came across. However, the story itself did not follow through to a satisfactory ending. In fact the author left the reader hanging and the story simply ended abruptly as if the author had not figured out how to end his tale.

IT perspective

Working for an IT company, I understand alot of what the author was trying to convey. I did enjoy the first half of the book, but it ended very weak. It just poof, ended, praise Ralph.

I thought the narrator, Ramiz Monsef, did a great job. And I look forward to hearing any futher books narrated by him.

Icky is the word!

I wanted to give this a chance, kept listening longer than I should have even though the story made no sense. I finally gave up after chapter 25 because the story just kept getting progressively worse! I can’t bring myself to finish it.

I LIKE TO CALL GOD RALPH, DEAR RALPH

ICKY, WAS THE PERFECT WORD TO DESCRIBE THE CONSULTANT
When this book came out, Audible put it in the top 20 of the Horror Category. I believe their was a movie or a series coming out about it at the time. Audible than made it a daily deal on April 16th, 2016. The top reviewer for the book at that time was a very trusted Horror reviewer at the time. She was ranked 2nd behind the untouchable AudiblebookReviewer, King of the I got it for free, check my blog reviewer. She gave it four stars and said it was the best Little had ever written. The rating at the time was around 3.9. A lot of people took advantage of the daily deal, including me, sending the book to number one in Horror. I was going to listen to the book, but noticed the ratings were dropping dramatically. The reviews were not good. Today the rating for the book is 3.0. This book was a massive failure, but I paid for it, so this week I finally took it on.

FAVORITE POSITION, MISSIONARY
AS anyone who reads my reviews knows, I either love a book or hate it and I often will not finish a book, I am not enjoying. It is against my religion. I got through five hours, but did not think the book awful. I quit because it was taking too long to come together and I was not invested in the characters. At first I was intrigued, as someone who has worked for Aholes. I even worked for a guy back in the 80's, who was screwing half the office girls and doing what he could to get involved in everyone's sex life. You could do that in the 80's, matter of fact it was kind of expected. This book has an 80's feel to it. At that time, there were a lot of so called motivational guru's who were being employed by companies to motivate their employees. I know one girl back then, who worked for a company, where they all brought pillows to work and spent time in a dark room together. It was fairly common. HBO had a movie that played a lot at the time, that was very similar to this book. It was a sort of horror.

G STANDS FOR GENERATION
In the first five hours, the book had some sex and some gore and it was obvious that it was building up to something probably scary. I was too impatient to listen for another seven hours and maybe, be disappointed in the end. Those people with more patience, might enjoy this. I especially think older people who worked in the eighties and whose company was involved in these silly antics will enjoy it.

DAILY DEAL
I am still following and still respect the now third place, (behind me) reviewer. Nobody agrees with anybody 100% of the time. I don't follow the number one guy anymore, simply because he keeps blowing up my e-mail with his multiple reviews a day, (kinda like I am doing to you today, sorry, I got an unexpected day off and I need to catch up.) I promise after today, I will not do more than two a day.

EGREGIOUSLY POORLY WRITTEN!!!

Interesting premise, that became so disgusting and exploitive, I returned it.
Although well performed this book is simply dreadful. Trust me this author is a vain and a poor facsimile of Brett Easton Ellis.

Bentley little is amazing

I really liked this book. Bentley is amazing story teller. I wish he would have said who Ralph was and what bfg stood for. but if there is to be another I don't mind not knowing yet. great to here the narrator.