Bet Your Life [Hardcover]

Richard Dooling (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 5, 2002

A terminally ill man sells his life insurance policy for cheap to an investor who will collect the full amount when the sick man dies.But is the sick man really sick? Does he even exist? In the age of AIDS and no-holds-barred capitalism, the business of betting on how much longer sick people will live is thriving. Is this new market in which life insurance policies are bought and sold a legitimate enterprise, or is it an open invitation to fraud and murder?

Carver Hartnett, Miranda Pryor, and Leonard Stillmach all work for Reliable Allied Trust, in Omaha, where they investigate insurance fraud. Carver -- the narrator of this edgy and surprising novel -- is frustrated. His company would rather raise premiums than prosecute insurance criminals. Miranda, his seductive coworker, leads him on and then puts him off -- she seems to have something monstrous to hide. When their friend, crazy Lenny, a computer gamer and an expert with drug-and-alcohol cocktails, dies in the middle of playing Delta-Strike online, a strange and disturbing narrative unfolds around a possible murder and massive insurance fraud. Carver is drawn deeper into various hearts of darkness, and in his efforts to discover the truth behind his friend's death, he ends up betting his own life.

Filled with memorable characterizations -- Carver's boss, the shrewd Old Man Norton; Dagmar Helveg, Norton's fascist assistant; regional investigator Charlie Becker, a plain-talking, commonsense cop -- Bet Your Life conducts a stealthy philosophical investigation of its own, in which our hero ends up investigating the mysteries of his soul.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Dooling, who was an NBA finalist for his White Man's Grave a few years back, never writes the same kind of book twice, and this time he's produced a sort of techno-noir thriller set within the confines of the insurance business. The reader learns a great deal about insurance scams and the cynicism pervading the industry, and the Omaha setting is piquant for its contrast with the high-living, trendy insurance investigators who are the book's stars, but the book's virtues end there. The plot is extraordinarily convoluted, with villains both expected and unexpected popping up every few pages, and neither Carver Hartnett, the narrator; his alcoholic, pill-popping buddy, Leonard Stillmach, whose mysterious death precipitates the action; nor beautiful but apparently unattainable Miranda Pryor are either appealing or believable. Carver, for instance, plays teenage blow-'em-away computer games with Leonard, Miranda downs gallons of vintage wine while fending off Carver's advances and all are given to sudden pseudo-profound pronouncements. One scene, in which Carver goes after Miranda while spouting chunks of the Abraham and Isaac story from the Bible, only to have her reply in kind, is an over-the-top classic of weirdness. There are nice touches-a low-profile local homicide detective sneering at the high-tech FBI, for instance-but for the most part the book is a stylistically perplexing mess.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

"In my line of work, we call it the f-word. Not the familiar obscenity but a close cousin and mercenary variant called fraud." Narrator Carver Harnett's job is to investigate insurance scams for Reliable Allied Trust in Omaha, NE, but it's a thankless task because "fraud runs through the insurance business like waste through a treatment plant," and the company would rather raise premiums on their honest customers than prosecute the fraudulent. When a fellow investigator is fired and later dies mysteriously, Carver discovers that deception and trickery run close to home. Why did the late Lenny Stillmach buy and then sell several life insurance policies worth a half million dollars to Heartland Viatical, a company he was supposed to be investigating? Did Lenny really have AIDS, as he claimed on the insurance applications, or was he involved in some huge con game? And what was his relationship with Miranda Pryor, a sexy co-worker for whom Carver feels unrequited lust? In his third novel, National Book Award finalist Dooling (White Man's Grave) tackles the murky world of viatical insurance ("where investors bet on how fast AIDS victims die") with mixed results. The premise is intriguing and the writing stylish, but the characters are mostly caricatures, and after a while the narrative becomes repetitive, tedious, and at times unbelievable. For larger collections.
Wilda Williams, "Library Journal"
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 342 pages
• Publisher: Harper; 1 edition (November 5, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060505397
• ISBN-13: 978-0060505394
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 5.8 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,236,621 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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