Customer Reviews

Bet Your Life

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

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.

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.

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

Many of the people purchasing this book at this stage in its cycle are fans of Dooling's previous novels, and like myself, would probably buy the book regardless of what reviews they might read. Until Bet Your Life, I couldn't imagine myself being disappointed by a Richard Dooling book.

Dooling's carefully-calibrated nastiness is there (albeit all too infrequently), but the plot limps along, and the characters - with one notable exception that I pray points to a spin-off - tend to merge into one not particularly interesting entity. There just don't seem to be enough ideas to sustain the book as a novel of this length.

For anyone not already acquainted with Dooling: "Critical Care" and "White Man's Grave" are two books that are difficult to top.

written on several levels.

First it is a murder mystery. Who, if anyone, killed Lenny Stilmach and why?

Then it is a comedy with several funny stories and characters. The story about the funeral of an Omaha politician was a howler.

There is the love/lust interest for our hero.

Computers, since they are a pervasive element of modern society, are prominently featured.

Drugs, unfortunately, are also in the same category.

The ancient vice of greed is the main element. The sick selling their life insurance policies during the their lifetime may or may not be a public good. It does happen but the criminal element have moved into the industry and many honest people have been bilked by what they thought was a safe investment doing some good for people.

Religion plays a role and shows that there is nothing new under the sun.

As in "Brainstorm" life imitates art. The recent takeover by the Florida Department of Insurance of Future First Financial Group (a viatical company) shows Dooling is right on the mark.

Detective Becker, styled after real Omaha detective Charlie Parker, is my favorite character.

The names are funny and, as an Omaha native, it is fun to see Omaha locations described in the book. But the insurance company Hartnett works for is NOT Mutual of Omaha or even Mutant of Omaha.

Doolings new book continues to display his imagination, intelligence and gift for making the seemingly mundane (an insurance company fraud division in *yawn* Omaha Nebraska) interesting. As a National Book Award finalist people seem to constantly be expecting Dooling to only right "important" books with heavy social comentary. This book is heavy on the latter and displays Doolings continued wide range of things which intruige him. Some people get confused by this diverity mistaking it for inconsistency. Consistency is of course contrary to nature, contrary to life and the last reguge of the unimaginative. Maslin's New York Times review of this book (praising it) was especially helpful and Dooling has a link to it on his web sight.
If a literary guy wants to write a mystery, good for him. This is especially true when it is and interesting and funny page turner as "Bet Your Life". Doolings ironic recounting of insurance fraud scams along with a diverse cast of characters make this an unsettling, compelling read as you laugh and squirm while reading about fraud, sexual fantasy, death and whire collar crime. This is a good read.

Stephen King loved this book. I didn't.

While he tries to imbue the insurance and viatical industries with intrigue and give Omaha Nebraska a noir-ish danger, they just don't fit. Add to that flying sledgehammer tech talk and oenophilist rants. The result is a lot of puffed-up scenes in a book that doesn't really satisfy. There's too much pulp and not enough brain, too much expected or at least predictable plotting, and the industry and city that provide the background for the book just refuse to play ball.

I could not put this book down. I never thought the insurance industry was fodder for a page-turner crime novel, but I really enjoyed it. The plot charges along and as always, Dooling's characterizations & asides are hilarious.

Dooling is a good writer, although he is too fond of mixed and and corny metaphors that feel, say, shoulder to shoulder with the treacly taste of a butterscotch malt on steroids. The language play does not impede, though, and this book is a fast read. But what about the characters and situations?

--A young uber-geek, strung out on computers and recreational drugs.
--The 30-ish insurance fraud investigator Carver, obsessed with an ambiguous sex object, and imitating private dick speech from film noir.
--The ambiguous sex object Miranda, another fraud investigator whose religious fanaticism pops up often and annoyingly.
--An older and grumpy insurance section head who hypocritically reminisces too often about the old days.
--A stereotyped police detective whose skill set embarrasses the inept FBI goons.
--And other minor players recognizable from movies. Or wait, maybe Dooling had a movie script in mind here.

This cast is set in the context of selling insurance policies (viaticals) that sit on the edge of, or jump into, fraud. If you are VERY interested in viaticals, you might like this book and its goofy twists and turns. But you will have to tolerate bizarre relationships, especially between Carver and Miranda. The oddest scene happens toward the end of the book when Carver storms Miranda's apartment and furiously shrieks out a metaphor with Jacob and Esau of Genesis fame. It goes on for pages. So far, so bad...and then...huh? Instead of dialing 911, Miranda suddenly gets all snuggly and Carver gets rewarded for his ranting.

If I had cared about any of the characters, I might have enjoyed this more. I can't wait to avoid the movie version.

This is a gripping tale, inventively-written in a style like no other and very funny. I instantly gave my copy to a good friend to read when i finished it.