BET YOUR LIFE. [Paperback]

Richard. Dooling (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback
• Publisher: HARPER-COLLINS. (2002)
• ASIN: B000OES0L8
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Midwest Book Review - noir voice, tidy suspense tale, October 17, 2003

By 

Laurel Johnson (Kansas USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Bet Your Life (Hardcover)

In Bet Your Life, Richard Dooling spins a tidy mystery suspense tale with twists and turns aplenty. Think Raymond Chandler complete with hi-tech savvy and a contemporary edge. Press releases dub this book "classic noir", and it certainly is that, combined with well-defined characters and an unusual plot

Carver Hartnett is a straight arrow insurance fraud investigator who tells the story in first person. Miranda Pryor is the chaste but seductive object of Carver's desire. And Lenny Stillmach is the friend who manages to be a high tech genius despite manic-depression and chronic drug and alcohol abuse. These three friends comprise the team of fraud investigators who are very good at what they do. Each brings different but effective skills to the team.

Lenny's unexpected death under strange circumstances casts suspicion on his friends. These suspicions are compounded by the discovery that he has purchased multiple six figure life insurance policies naming Carver and Miranda, as well as others, as beneficiaries. Seems that Lenny's boss, the local police, and FBI think he has been running a lucrative scam by buying and selling high dollar policies for fun and profit. Carver can't trust anyone, including Mrianda, and he finds himself up to his eyebrows in a local and federal investigation. His life is in danger and it's up to him to find out why as he tries to separate the good guys from the evil doers.

Richard Dooling is an award nominated author because his wordsmithery is unique. His style is modern with the noir voice of past masters of the genre. Bet Your Life is not a simplistic tale. Intelligent fans of the genre will enjoy the experience.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars slow and convoluted, April 7, 2003

By 

eclectictastes "eclectictastes" (Columbus, OH USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Bet Your Life (Hardcover)

Granted, making insurance seem interesting or even exciting takes special skills but this book makes you force yourself to pay attention. Not a good thing. There is nothing particularly interesting about the protagonist Carver Hartnett who pines after his co-worker Miranda for too many pages.

When Lenny, a co-worker of Carver and Miranda who has some risky personal habits, dies under mysterious circumstances, Carver sets to find out what happened. Despite's Dooling's attempts to create witty banter among the friends, I just didn't care enough to know what happened to Lenny who had no apparent traits to justify Carver and Miranda's loyalty to him. In addition, Carver doesn't come off as very bright in many of his actions. It's hard to sympathize with such a character.

Plodding dialogue with occasional religious references also slow the story down. I can't recommend this one.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars what a disappointment!, December 31, 2002

By 

"idyllicmorning" (tucson) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Bet Your Life (Hardcover)

I'd probably give this just one star if not for the author's proven brilliance with his first two books.

I think that Dooling's efforts to incorporate a relatively large number of characters have backfired... there's no real distinction between most of them, and I didn't find myself giving a damn about any of them.

In the acknowledgments, the author writes:

"I thank (names) - IT cyber wizards one and all - for (...) suggesting ways I could pretend to have more than an amateur's grasp of computer technology."

I think this may be the root of the problem with this book... Dooling's first two novels reflected deep personal experience, and a deep personal understanding of the subject matter at hand.

Unfortunately, this time Dooling is obviously just pretending... he still has only "an amateur's grasp of computer technology", and his efforts to pretend otherwise ruin this as a novel.

And viaticals aren't quite as new or scandalous as the author would have us believe. This novel seems to boil down to: "Man, can you believe there are people out there selling their own life insurance policies?!"

I would like to conclude by suggesting that the editors of this novel don't deserve the author's thanks.

QB