Bet Your Life by Richard Dooling

 


“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

Comments