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In spite of my love of hard-boiled detectives, I admit to being more squeamish than you might expect. This almost caused me to give up on Death Benefit because the villain here is one of the most cold-blooded evildoers I've encountered in a long time. But Philip Harper, a pseudonym for two men, one a journalist, the other a criminal psychologist, has created a Travis McGee of the modern day, an amateur who fixes things that can't otherwise be fixed. He's George Herman Gray (named for George Herman "Babe" Ruth), who at one time was a reporter. His experience investigating fraud led him in turn to trying to correct situations where the law just didn't work for people who were victimized. Gray suspects something is wrong when a good friend, a former lover, has died and the life insurance policy she had is not paying off; there's a reason for this. The agent who sold the policy is, pure and simple a crook. This isn't a secret - you know from page one that Jim Hartman is a killer. But putting it together isn't easy for Gray. Hartman is careful, is slick and he knows how to hide his tracks. But Gray's his equal in smarts and is determined. Readers who like thrillers will most definitely like this cleanly-written, fast moving book. Even those like me, who don't tend to enjoy the thriller style, might enjoy Death Benefit. It's not overly long, well-detailed but not ponderous, and if you are as squeamish as I am, you can skip a few paragraphs and then continue reading without missing the action.
Reviewed by Andi Shechter, August 2001
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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
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