The Walking

By: Bentley Little

Narrated by: John Pirhalla

It begins in a small Southwestern town. Then, it spreads. Across the country, a series of strange deaths have overtaken the living. And a stranger compulsion has overtaken the dead.

In a travesty of life, they drift with bizarre purpose toward an unknown destination. The walkers have become an obsession for investigator Miles Huerdeen. His father is one of them. Now lured into the shadow of the restless dead, Miles is a step closer to a secret as old as time - to a reality as dark as hell. For, Miles is following them into the deep end of an unfathomable nightmare.

©2000 Bentley Little (P)2021 JournalStone

Broader In Scope Than Much of Little's Work

If you’re familiar with Bentley Little, you’re probably well aware that he’s an author who excels at tales of small towns with dark secrets, hidden mysteries, and sinister forces beneath the surface. He takes the mundane and everyday aspects of our lives and transforms them into something sublimely creepy with apparent ease. That is, in fact, the man’s bread and butter as far as I’m concerned, and few have come close to doing it half as well.

The Walking includes a fair bit of what you’d expect from Little but with a lot more history involved than is often found in his work. The tale unfolds during two different periods, as the revelations behind what’s happening are deeply tied to events of the distant past, where a town of witches was established in the Southwest. In this place, they could be safe from persecution and the religious intolerance of the rest of American civilization. That is until everything falls apart.

In the modern day, we discover a plague of peculiar variety, in that some recently deceased people are suddenly driven to walk, although they’re clearly quite dead. Family secrets are uncovered, the cruel fate of the once-prosperous town of witches is revealed, and the cast of characters we’ve been following are forced to meet face-to-face with the mysterious force that’s animating the dead and calling them home.

Fans of The Summoning are sure to enjoy the appearance of a certain opportunistic FBI agent.

This was slower than a lot of Little’s work, but it was not disappointing for that fact. It felt different from much of his other work, including the pacing and the wider scale of the overall narrative.

John Pirhalla’s narration was top-notch, leaving no complaints and nothing to be desired.

loved it

I really like the narrator. good story, and I like that they incorporated a character from a previous story

great story

I loved it as most of Bentley's books, I blush sometimes but I live in Az. and most always enjoy his books.

not my favorite

I read a lot of Bentley Little. this story did not capture my interest and took a lot to get through.

Narrator

Someone needs to tell the narrator how to pronounce Saquaro, Sa-war-0
Not my favorite Bentley Little story..