"Bet Your Life" by Richard Dooling
03-01-03, 09:49 AM
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Possibly too late now but a couple of "second-hand" reviews is all I can manage....
Tibor Fischer
Saturday February 1, 2003
The Guardian
"The name Omaha may sound like a calf bawling for its mother, but it's not a cattle or corn derivative." Richard Dooling is the Graham Greene of Omaha. Or perhaps the Evelyn Waugh. He also serves as Tom Wolfe and Carl Hiaasen and, in his fourth novel, Bet Your Life, he has a stab at being Elmore Leonard.
For fans of Dooling's earlier work, there are a few surprises. First-person narration for a start, and the narrator's job; Carver Harnett, works in the "Special Investigations Unit of Reliable Allied Trust" - he is an insurance-fraud investigator in Omaha. One of the most salient features of Dooling's previous novels was an almost obsessional hatred of insurance companies, which were pilloried mercilessly. Carver is nevertheless our hero, however fallible he may be, and he still allows Dooling the opportunity to pour more scorn on insurance companies.
Carver gets to do very little investigating, because "the vice-presidents in marketing and sales and product management don't care". The company can easily recoup any losses from fraud by charging its honest customers higher premiums. Prosecuting fraudsters is seen as messy and time-consuming. Carver's boss, Old Man Norton, yearns for the old days when insurance investigators would go after fraudsters with the zeal of G-men and whole towns would be taken apart.
Bet Your Life nevertheless provides a severe test of Carver's investigative skills. In classic roman noir style, Carver sets out to discover the truth about the death of his recently fired colleague and friend, Lenny, who expired in odd and, for Carver, incriminating circumstances; circumstances that also involve the beautiful but resolutely unbeddable Miranda, another insurance investigator, and a Catholic twist on the femme fatale.
All this in Nebraska. Dooling's chosen territory is the mid-size mid-western city. Not the metropolis, but a step up from small-town America. Dooling's portrait of Omaha is affectionately teasing: "It was rush-hour. Well, rush half-hour"; "St Dymphna's Cathedral... built on the highest hill in town. Okay, the highest bluff."
Carver fulfils the blundering gumshoe role, always hoping to be one step ahead of everyone else but always discovering he's one step behind. Dooling has produced an hommage to Chandler et al, but a soft-boiled one, with an abundance of information on the insurance industry, computer geeks, voice-analysis software and the new trade in "viaticals", life insurance policies sold at a discount by terminally ill patients in order to get their hands on some money.
After Bet Your Life it's hard to imagine that anyone will write a novel about the American insurance industry for another 30 years or so. Dooling is a lawyer by profession, and, judging from his books, a frighteningly good one, since his energy, attention to detail and omnivorous intellect are formidable. Indeed the detail is, occasionally, a trifle too extensive, but many of his learned excursions into history are amusing or memorable: "In ancient Rome, people offered themselves up for execution to amuse the public for five minae - about a hundred bucks in our money - the sum to be paid to their heirs. Historians say the market was so competitive that candidates would offer to be beaten to death rather than beheaded because slow, painful death provided more of a spectacle for the Colosseum crowds."
Dooling's first two novels, Critical Care and White Man's Grave, were comic masterpieces. A hospital's intensive care unit was the background for the former, while White Man's Grave divided its time between Indianapolis and Sierra Leone (where Dooling lived for a while). These two novels (and indeed Dooling's third, Brainstorm) were laugh-out-loud funny all the way through, and thus the other surprise about Bet Your Life is that the humour has been all but banished.
There are a few sniggers (Lenny is fired for his improper rejection of the claims of 20 dead Nigerians all called Mohammed Bilko, and Carver encounters a deaf FBI agent who is a living lie-detector), but Dooling has evidently chosen not to deploy his favourite weapon. However, his other party piece is here: fear. Offhand, I can't think of other comic writers who can switch from humour to horror so well. In White Man's Grave, for example, there is a sensational showdown with a witchfinder.
You don't often get characters in contemporary settings worrying about hell and its true nature, as Miranda does constantly (hell or hell lite?), and Bet Your Life climaxes with a wired-up Carver going into a viatical company on behalf of the FBI for a truly trouser-wetting meeting. Best of all, however, is Dooling's outline of a completely legal way of making $300,000 out of insurance companies.
Saturday February 1, 2003
The Guardian
"The name Omaha may sound like a calf bawling for its mother, but it's not a cattle or corn derivative." Richard Dooling is the Graham Greene of Omaha. Or perhaps the Evelyn Waugh. He also serves as Tom Wolfe and Carl Hiaasen and, in his fourth novel, Bet Your Life, he has a stab at being Elmore Leonard.
For fans of Dooling's earlier work, there are a few surprises. First-person narration for a start, and the narrator's job; Carver Harnett, works in the "Special Investigations Unit of Reliable Allied Trust" - he is an insurance-fraud investigator in Omaha. One of the most salient features of Dooling's previous novels was an almost obsessional hatred of insurance companies, which were pilloried mercilessly. Carver is nevertheless our hero, however fallible he may be, and he still allows Dooling the opportunity to pour more scorn on insurance companies.
Carver gets to do very little investigating, because "the vice-presidents in marketing and sales and product management don't care". The company can easily recoup any losses from fraud by charging its honest customers higher premiums. Prosecuting fraudsters is seen as messy and time-consuming. Carver's boss, Old Man Norton, yearns for the old days when insurance investigators would go after fraudsters with the zeal of G-men and whole towns would be taken apart.
Bet Your Life nevertheless provides a severe test of Carver's investigative skills. In classic roman noir style, Carver sets out to discover the truth about the death of his recently fired colleague and friend, Lenny, who expired in odd and, for Carver, incriminating circumstances; circumstances that also involve the beautiful but resolutely unbeddable Miranda, another insurance investigator, and a Catholic twist on the femme fatale.
All this in Nebraska. Dooling's chosen territory is the mid-size mid-western city. Not the metropolis, but a step up from small-town America. Dooling's portrait of Omaha is affectionately teasing: "It was rush-hour. Well, rush half-hour"; "St Dymphna's Cathedral... built on the highest hill in town. Okay, the highest bluff."
Carver fulfils the blundering gumshoe role, always hoping to be one step ahead of everyone else but always discovering he's one step behind. Dooling has produced an hommage to Chandler et al, but a soft-boiled one, with an abundance of information on the insurance industry, computer geeks, voice-analysis software and the new trade in "viaticals", life insurance policies sold at a discount by terminally ill patients in order to get their hands on some money.
After Bet Your Life it's hard to imagine that anyone will write a novel about the American insurance industry for another 30 years or so. Dooling is a lawyer by profession, and, judging from his books, a frighteningly good one, since his energy, attention to detail and omnivorous intellect are formidable. Indeed the detail is, occasionally, a trifle too extensive, but many of his learned excursions into history are amusing or memorable: "In ancient Rome, people offered themselves up for execution to amuse the public for five minae - about a hundred bucks in our money - the sum to be paid to their heirs. Historians say the market was so competitive that candidates would offer to be beaten to death rather than beheaded because slow, painful death provided more of a spectacle for the Colosseum crowds."
Dooling's first two novels, Critical Care and White Man's Grave, were comic masterpieces. A hospital's intensive care unit was the background for the former, while White Man's Grave divided its time between Indianapolis and Sierra Leone (where Dooling lived for a while). These two novels (and indeed Dooling's third, Brainstorm) were laugh-out-loud funny all the way through, and thus the other surprise about Bet Your Life is that the humour has been all but banished.
There are a few sniggers (Lenny is fired for his improper rejection of the claims of 20 dead Nigerians all called Mohammed Bilko, and Carver encounters a deaf FBI agent who is a living lie-detector), but Dooling has evidently chosen not to deploy his favourite weapon. However, his other party piece is here: fear. Offhand, I can't think of other comic writers who can switch from humour to horror so well. In White Man's Grave, for example, there is a sensational showdown with a witchfinder.
You don't often get characters in contemporary settings worrying about hell and its true nature, as Miranda does constantly (hell or hell lite?), and Bet Your Life climaxes with a wired-up Carver going into a viatical company on behalf of the FBI for a truly trouser-wetting meeting. Best of all, however, is Dooling's outline of a completely legal way of making $300,000 out of insurance companies.
By Marc Flores, special for USA TODAY
Backdrop: Dooling, a practicing attorney and author of the noir novel White Man's Grave— a finalist for the 1994 National Book Award — currently is writing the four-part ABC miniseries Kingdom Hospital with horror legend Stephen King.
In Bet Your Life by Richard Dooling an insurance investigator's search for a friend's murderer leads to an investigation of companies that purchase life insurance policies from people who are HIV-positive, then resell them to investors at a markup price. It's a pretty grim setting but one that the author handles with humor, wit and suspense. Dooling's Web-savvy characters are startlingly realistic: They shock, amuse, frustrate and refuse to behave. His descriptions are breathtaking and crystal-clear. Bet Your Life is gripping, but its Grisham-like finale might strike some readers as clichéd.
Backdrop: Dooling, a practicing attorney and author of the noir novel White Man's Grave— a finalist for the 1994 National Book Award — currently is writing the four-part ABC miniseries Kingdom Hospital with horror legend Stephen King.
In Bet Your Life by Richard Dooling an insurance investigator's search for a friend's murderer leads to an investigation of companies that purchase life insurance policies from people who are HIV-positive, then resell them to investors at a markup price. It's a pretty grim setting but one that the author handles with humor, wit and suspense. Dooling's Web-savvy characters are startlingly realistic: They shock, amuse, frustrate and refuse to behave. His descriptions are breathtaking and crystal-clear. Bet Your Life is gripping, but its Grisham-like finale might strike some readers as clichéd.
Last edited by benedict; 03-01-03 at 09:52 AM.
