“In
my line of work, we call it the f-word. Not the too familiar obscenity
but a close cousin and mercenary variant called fraud. I work in the
Special Investigations Unit of Reliable Allied Trust, where I
investigate insurance fraud.”
These are the novel's opening
lines, reflections from narrator/protagonist Carver Hartnett. The
novel's setting is Omaha, Nebraska, a small city the city paper calls
“the Midlands,” TV stations refer to “the Heartlands,” and one
character, soon to be found slumped dead over his home computer, called
“the Mid-Heartland.”
What will a reader encounter in Richard
Dooling's intriguing, highly inventive noir thriller? Take a gander at
the following bullets:
CARVER HARTNETT
Given another ten
years, our investigative sleuth might develop the savvy and keen
observation skills of a Philip Marlowe or Sam Spade. But right now, he's
only twenty-eight and comes across as a hardboiled Huck Finn with a lot
to learn. Deep into the novel, Carver reflects back on what those
around him said in the opening chapters and realizes, a bit too late,
that he failed to pick up on important clues. And, yes, like other
characters, his name is Richard Dooling's nod to the golden era of noir -
Chandler, Cain, and Hammett.
LENNY STILLMACH
“Lenny is one
of those guys who turn dangerously good-looking at age nineteen and then
spend the rest of their lives ravaging their classical good looks with
romantic substance abuse.” In addition to his frequent use of drugs like
ecstasy, Lenny is covered with tattoos and has various body piercings
(ears, nose, mouth). Lenny is also manic-depressive. Recognizing the
ultra-conservative nature of the insurance industry, why would Lenny be
permitted through the front door? The answer is simple: Lenny is a
genius computer geek, possessing the skills needed to uncover, collate,
and analyze the necessary data to identify insurance fraud. Thus, along
with Carver, Lenny Stillman is a key member of the Special
Investigations Unit.
What Lenny Stillmach is not is a good people
person. A crisis is at hand: Lenny used the wrong language when
speaking with a Nigerian lawyer while denying claims for twenty deceased
Nigerians, all with the name Mohammed Bilkos. This recorded
conversation leads to Lenny's dismissal. However, Carver is suspicious.
Surely there must be other reasons, as Lenny is such a valuable company
asset, saving Reliable Allied Trust hundreds of thousands of dollars.
And that very night, following a whirl at a casino along with excessive
drug use and alcohol consumption, Lenny Stillmach is the one found dead
in his apartment.
MIRANDA PRYOR
What's crime noir without a
femme fatale? Meet the luscious, alluring lady who also works with
Carver and Lenny in the Special Investigations Unit. “She draped herself over the
minibar and gave me the limp wrist, the painted eyelids, the decadent,
hooded gaze, the dulcet, low-throated croon of Lauren Bacall in The Big Sleep or Barbara Stanwyck in Double Indemnity.”
Is Carver madly in love with Miranda? You bet he is. Was Lenny also
madly in love with lovely Miranda? Oh, yes. To add fuel to the heart's
fire, Miranda Pryor keeps deep secrets, one deep, dark secret disclosed
toward the end, a true shocker.
OLD MAN NORTON
Like his
father before him, Dead Man Norton, the best crackerjack insurance
investigator in the Midwest, Old Man Norton is the boss heading up
Reliable's Special Investigations Unit. For a spot-on likeness of
Norton, think of cigar chomping Edward G. Robinson playing Keyes in the
1944 classic, Double Indemnity, the favorite movie of both father and son. 
POLICE INSPECTOR BECKER
Becker
is a beefy detective from the old school, a guy who uses a lead pencil
instead of a computer and lots of driving around in his car and plain
old shoe-leather to hunt down the culprits. If you want a good picture
of Becker, think back to Dashiell Hammett's Continental Op in Red Harvest or The Dain Curse.
VIATICAL LIFE INSURANCE POLICIES
Here's
how it works: A healthy thirty-year-old named Bob buys a $100,000 life
insurance policy. At the age of forty, Bob contracts AIDS and
desperately needs money for medicine and medical bills. He decides to
sell his policy to Ace Viatical Company for $20,000, enabling him to
access the funds necessary for his treatment. Tragically, Bob passes
away at the age of forty-two, and Ace Viatical collects the $100,000
payout. This practice is entirely legal; however, there are numerous
angles and potential scams that can be exploited, both by individuals
buying and selling policies, and notably, by viatical companies. Carver
discovers the hard way just how ruthless a viatical company can be.
OMAHA
Caver
looks out of Old Man Norton's large corner office window at this city
that's the insurance capital of the Midwest “nestled in a bend of the
Missouri River, and across the water in the middle distance Harveys and
Harrah's casinos, the dog tracks and porn emporiums of Council Bluffs,
Iowa.” Now that it's the late 1990s, the entire population mixes alcohol
with drugs -lots of drugs of every variety, both legal and illegal.
Gone are the good old days of God, family, and Cornhusker football.
All-American, spanking-clean Omaha wallows in the seediness of
Chandler's LA.
Carver and Miranda were the ones who whooped it up
with Lenny that night. They are also the ones who went back to Lenny's
apartment and found him dead. Bet Your Life counts as a
fast-paced nail-biter filled with unexpected twists, reversals, and turns, all propelled by viatical insurance policies where Carver and Miranda and Lenny are
among those deeply involved both as buyers and beneficiaries. On another
level, the novel is one of ideas: life and death, heaven and hell,
fatalism and free will, a novel very much worth any reader's time, especially if one is a fan of classic crime noir.
American novelist Richard Dooling, born 1954
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