Assumption of Risk - Hardcover

Silver, Jim

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0684811308 ISBN 13: 9780684811307

Publisher: Simon & Schuster, 1996

Synopsis

Luther Sitasy, an investment banker, becomes a psychotic killer when he--along with his sexy partner in crime, Dana Quinn--concocts a insurance scam that entails murdering policy claimants. A first novel. 60,000 first printing.

About this title

From Kirkus Reviews:

James M. Cain showed that an insurance thriller can be a stylish, unequivocal success. Debut novelist Silver, himself an insurance man in Phoenix, shows that Cain was an exception. Luther Sitasy--of a rich Texas shipping family--has wound up working as an insurance claimsman. Silver explains his character's odd career choice in terms of post-Vietnam trauma and recovery from booze, but it's still an uncomfortable fit. The guy lives in a sprawling Arizona mansion, collects muscle cars, keeps his gun hand steady in a basement range, and employs an elderly Japanese couple to handle the cooking and cleaning. Divorced from wife Jackie, a TV news producer, Luther lives for his work (and play, which includes a WW II fighter plane and a Vietnam-era helicopter). Luther stumbles onto a vast insurance scam in which claimants are being murdered and their claims funneled to a shell corporation in Singapore. The perpetrators are Norman Bloodstone and Dana Quinn: He's the psycho who does the killing and then tells her about it during their sexual celebrations; she works at Luther's firm and keeps track of the scam's cash flow, now edging up to the deadly duo's $20 million target. Norman and Dana, however, are almost as busy double-crossing each other as Luther is tracking them down, and Dana meanwhile has a sideline going with her family lawyer that, once exposed, sends Norman on a killing spree, his victims including Luther's dog and two of his coworkers. At end, the inevitable confrontation features Norman with a sniper's rifle, Luther with a chip on his shoulder, and a small army of lawmen concentrated in an amusement park modeled after Nam. Silver's talent for microscopic techno-description, and his appetite for gore, can't rescue this effort from a glacial pace and cardboard characters. In between the juicy stuff, it's all wonky insurance babble and guntalk, with an undercurrent of right-wing politics that does nothing to push along the tale. -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

From Publishers Weekly:

A pair of cold-blooded killers, one male, one female, conspire to skim millions of dollars from insurance companies in this ingenious first novel. The plot hatched by investment banker Norman Bloodstone and his partner, Dana Quinn, requires claimants to drop their claims-and, for this to happen, the pair are perfectly willing to expedite the demise of the claimants and, when necessary, their attorneys. Vietnam vet Luther Sitasy, head of the policy limits claims division of a Phoenix insurance company, stumbles onto the scheme by accident, eventually putting himself, his family and his friends in danger, especially from Bloodstone, who might as well be called Bloodlust. In a welcome twist, Sitasy, rather than playing superhero, looks for help from an old Vietnam buddy who's now an FBI agent. Silver, himself a Vietnam vet and employee of a Phoenix insurance company, creates an intriguing hero in Sitasy and a memorable villain in Bloodstone, even if he doesn't make quite all he could of the intricate relationships between the characters. His prose is vigorous and, in general, this is an impressive debut.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Publication date: 1996
• ISBN 10: 0684811308
• ISBN 13: 9780684811307
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 368