With commoditization and disintermediation being the talk of the town, we'd like to remind folks that it's summer. And summer times are meant for easy breezy romances and page-turner thrillers. So drop a few syllables and pick up a few books; we can promise heated affairs, insurance scams, murder mysteries and exotic dancing.
1. Double Indemnity
Author: James M. Cain
Published Date: 1943
Plot: Walter Huff is an insurance agent who falls for the married Phyllis Nirdlinger, who is in need of consultation regarding accident insurance for her husband. In spite of his basic decent and good-old nature, Walter allows himself to be seduced into helping the femme fatale kill her husband for the insurance money.
Hashtag: #InsuranceFraud #LoveAffair #Murder
2. Double Shuffle
Author: James Hadley Chase
Published Date: 1954
Plot: Why would an obscure blonde dancer who performed in a G-string - with a deadly snake for a partner - be insured for a million dollars? That’s the million-dollar question on Steve Harmas’ mind. As the special investigator assigned to this obscure case, the only thing he knows fro sure is that this isn’t another publicity stunt; someone stood to gain an awful lot of money if she died.
Hashtag: #InsuranceFraud, #ExoticDancing #Blondes
3. The Rainmaker
Author: John Grisham
Published Date: 1995
Plot: Rudy Baylor, a young man barely out of law school, is required to provide free legal advice to a group of senior citizens, and it is there that he meets his first “clients,” Dot and Buddy Black. Their son, Donny Ray, is dying of leukemia, and their insurance company has flatly refused to pay for his medical treatments. While Rudy is at first skeptical, he soon realizes that the Blacks really have been shockingly mistreated by their insurance company, and that he just may have stumbled on one of the largest insurance frauds anyone’s ever seen.
Hashtag: #Corruption, #Power, #Greed
4. Death Benefits
Author: Thomas Perry
Published Date: 2012
Plot: A careful, methodical young data analyst for a California insurance company, John Walker, knows when people will marry, at what age they will most likely have children and when they will die. All signs point to a long successful career, until Max Stillman, a gruff security consultant, appears without warning at the office. It seems a colleague with whom Walker once had an affair has disappeared after paying a very large death benefit to an impostor. Stillman wants to find and convict her; Walker is convinced the woman is innocent. Now Walker teams up with Stillman on an urgent race relentlessly leading to a payoff that just might shock the life out of him
Hashtag: #Chase #Affair
5. Dead Anyway
Author: Kris Knopf
Published Date: 2012
Plot: The hit man who invades the Cathcarts’ upscale home in Stamford, Conn., tells Florencia Cathcart that, if she doesn’t write down the answers to five questions, he’ll kill her husband. When she complies, he shoots them both anyway. Florencia dies, but Arthur merely hovers in a coma for months. Convinced upon his return to life that his killer’s been monitoring his progress with a view to finishing him off, he persuades his neurologist sister, Evelyn, to have him declared dead. She agrees, although she’s signing on to a long list of potential charges for conspiracy and insurance fraud, and Arthur, once he’s erased from the grid, is free to assume the identity of one Alex Rimes and go after the hit man and his employer. He tires easily, he limps badly, and his vision is poor, but his skills as a freelance researcher turn out to be surprisingly useful, though he can’t imagine why anyone would order the execution of either himself or Florencia, who owned a successful insurance agency. The trail to the killers leads through a wary arrangement with a retired FBI agent, an elaborate precious-metals scam and a society party to die for before Arthur finally confronts his quarry in a sequence that manages both to satisfy readers’ bloodlust and to point toward a sequel.
Hashtag: #InsuranceFraud #DataBreach
The End
Plot: Walter Huff is an insurance agent who falls for the married Phyllis Nirdlinger, who is in need of consultation regarding accident insurance for her husband. In spite of his basic decent and good-old nature, Walter allows himself to be seduced into helping the femme fatale kill her husband for the insurance money.
Hashtag: #InsuranceFraud #LoveAffair #Murder
2. Double Shuffle
Author: James Hadley Chase
Published Date: 1954
Plot: Why would an obscure blonde dancer who performed in a G-string - with a deadly snake for a partner - be insured for a million dollars? That’s the million-dollar question on Steve Harmas’ mind. As the special investigator assigned to this obscure case, the only thing he knows fro sure is that this isn’t another publicity stunt; someone stood to gain an awful lot of money if she died.
Hashtag: #InsuranceFraud, #ExoticDancing #Blondes
3. The Rainmaker
Author: John Grisham
Published Date: 1995
Plot: Rudy Baylor, a young man barely out of law school, is required to provide free legal advice to a group of senior citizens, and it is there that he meets his first “clients,” Dot and Buddy Black. Their son, Donny Ray, is dying of leukemia, and their insurance company has flatly refused to pay for his medical treatments. While Rudy is at first skeptical, he soon realizes that the Blacks really have been shockingly mistreated by their insurance company, and that he just may have stumbled on one of the largest insurance frauds anyone’s ever seen.
Hashtag: #Corruption, #Power, #Greed
4. Death Benefits
Author: Thomas Perry
Published Date: 2012
Plot: A careful, methodical young data analyst for a California insurance company, John Walker, knows when people will marry, at what age they will most likely have children and when they will die. All signs point to a long successful career, until Max Stillman, a gruff security consultant, appears without warning at the office. It seems a colleague with whom Walker once had an affair has disappeared after paying a very large death benefit to an impostor. Stillman wants to find and convict her; Walker is convinced the woman is innocent. Now Walker teams up with Stillman on an urgent race relentlessly leading to a payoff that just might shock the life out of him
Hashtag: #Chase #Affair
5. Dead Anyway
Author: Kris Knopf
Published Date: 2012
Plot: The hit man who invades the Cathcarts’ upscale home in Stamford, Conn., tells Florencia Cathcart that, if she doesn’t write down the answers to five questions, he’ll kill her husband. When she complies, he shoots them both anyway. Florencia dies, but Arthur merely hovers in a coma for months. Convinced upon his return to life that his killer’s been monitoring his progress with a view to finishing him off, he persuades his neurologist sister, Evelyn, to have him declared dead. She agrees, although she’s signing on to a long list of potential charges for conspiracy and insurance fraud, and Arthur, once he’s erased from the grid, is free to assume the identity of one Alex Rimes and go after the hit man and his employer. He tires easily, he limps badly, and his vision is poor, but his skills as a freelance researcher turn out to be surprisingly useful, though he can’t imagine why anyone would order the execution of either himself or Florencia, who owned a successful insurance agency. The trail to the killers leads through a wary arrangement with a retired FBI agent, an elaborate precious-metals scam and a society party to die for before Arthur finally confronts his quarry in a sequence that manages both to satisfy readers’ bloodlust and to point toward a sequel.
Hashtag: #InsuranceFraud #DataBreach
The End
