Paul Wardlow couldn't be happier after landing his job as an administrative assistant at Arovista city hall. The pay is good, the benefits are great, and he has the opportunity to finally help put some good out into the world. It seems like a dream.
But all is not well in city hall, and it hasn’t been for some time.
Doors open up on hallways that are not listed on any layout. Employees attend meetings and return changed. Strange men come and go, with no record of them being employed there--or even of being alive.
And then there are the whispered rumors of the Corp Yard, where no one is ever seen entering and no one is ever seen leaving, but screams are still heard.
Arovista's local government is preparing for changes. Big changes. For a new plan. A new future. And it will not tolerate interference.
As the saying goes… you can't fight City Hall.
CITY HALL is Bentley Little in his element, a scathing plunge into violence and madness and small scale government that only he could deliver.
Do people choose to work at City Hall or does the city choose them?
Paul Wardlow had been job hunting for a while and was excited to land an interview at City Hall. After the unpleasant turn his interview took, he never expected to be hired. He would have been better off had he never applied.
Gavin Barre wants to make some positive changes and decides to run for City Council. Little does he know who holds the real power in Arovista.
Janis Kaminsky had been retired from City Hall for 2 years when she was asked to return. She ignored her hazy memories of something being not quite right in her previous years working there. Those half-remembered feelings about the basement might have only been nightmares. Having escaped once and lived to retire, she should never have gone back.
What begins as just another ordinary situation spirals into the bizarre and frightening. Some of the characters are already deeply under the city's influence, leaving very few normal people to notice or care what is happening. Are they any match for the power of the city? Or as they go along to get along will they lose that small voice of conscience that tells them what they are witnessing is wrong? Bentley Little's City Hall reads like a darkly comedic fever dream of satire and horror where the bizarre becomes the new normal and I loved it.
My thanks to Cemetery Dance Publications for the ARC.
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