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Type of bind: Mass Market Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN num: 9780804115421
ISBN number: 0804115427
Label: Ballantine Books
Manufacturer: Ballantine Books
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 384
Printing Date: 2001-11
Publishing house: Ballantine Books
Release Date: November 27, 2001
Sale Popularity Level: 241629
Studio: Ballantine Books
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Product Description:
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 north-by-northeast race? relentlessly leading to a pay-off that just might shock the life out of him. . . .
Amazon.com Review:
Fans of Thomas Perry's popular series featuring Jane Whitefield, the Seneca Indian woman who helps people disappear (The Face-Changers, Shadow Woman, et al.) may be disappointed when they discover that Death Benefits doesn't feature the heroine who has won this writer so many new readers. But the disappointment won't last longer than the very first page of this intriguing and extremely well-written new thriller, whose hero, John Walker, a data analyst for a large insurance company, deserves a series of his own.
When a security man named Max Stillman plucks Walker out of the office pool and dragoons him into investigating a fraud against the McClaren Life and Casualty, Walker's previously safe life takes a new and potentially dangerous turn. As the pair begin searching for the missing employee, who signed off on the huge (and phony) payoff of a death claim, and follow her to a grave in a Midwestern wheat field, Walker discovers talents he never knew he had and a thirst for vengeance. With the mysterious Stillman, he tracks the conspirators to a New Hampshire village and an explosive and shocking conclusion to a fraud that's much older than either of the men might have guessed. Like Don Winslow, whose California Fire and Life also focused on insurance fraud, Perry manages to make even the dusty back corners of the corporate world a likely setting for mystery and mayhem. This is a sharp, suspenseful, successful debut for a pair of unlikely compatriots, marked by Perry's edgy, noirish style, lively dialogue, and superb pacing. --Jane Adams
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Rated by buyers 
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The very first half of "Death Benefits" is much better than the second. Unfortunately, a great character, special security consultant Max Stillman, unaccountably becomes stupid in the final third of the book. He's way ahead of the main protagonist, John Walker, and the readers in the very first part of the book, then way behind both Walker and the readers in the last part. I knew what was going on in the town Walker and Stillman were investigating 100 pages before they figured it out. Case in point, when Stillman and Walker saw that the local police department -- serving a tiny hamlet of around 400 people -- had something like 18 police cruisers and a professionally staffed police department, they only thought it mildly interesting. (In reality, a town of this size would likely have one cruiser, maybe two cops tops, and they'd likely be of the minimum-wage lifer variety.) The other problem is that somehow Stillman, a professional security consultant, Walker, an insurance analyst helping Stillman, and a gonzo computer hacker accompanying them, somehow went out on an investigation without anyone carrying a cell phone.
No, I'm sorry, I love Thomas Perry's work usually, but this one badly fell apart about halfway in.
Rated by buyers -
I had to take an unexpected trip recently and someone handed me this book to fill the time. I'd never read anything by Perry before, but now I'm going to be seeking out his earlier work and watching for new ones. It's a thriller that's big on character as well as action, and I'm amazed it hasn't already come out as a movie. John Walker is an analyst in the headquarters of a San Francisco insurance company, a small-ish, old fashioned sort of outfit that competes successfully with the conglomerates by concentrating on service. A young woman, a rising sales person in the Pasadena office with whom he had had a brief relationship eighteen months before, seems to have skipped out in the middle of a $12-million-dollar fraud, and Max Stillman, the company's "security expert," takes Walker along on his investigation. The case, which now includes a murder, is brought to a not very satisfactory conclusion less than halfway through the book -- obviously, there's more to come. Walker is sent off to the company's Miami office to help out in the immediate aftermath of a hurricane, where he stumbles upon a very similar scam and hollers for help. Stillman quickly arrives in Miami and the chase is on again -- and Perry brings new meaning to the phrase "criminal conspiracy." Along the way, Walker gets involved with a young female hacker whose boss supplies Stillman with illegally obtained information for his work, and she gets caught up in the massive fraud case as well. All three principal characters are nicely developed, with Walker becoming less innocent and more active as he learns from Stillman, and the details of the insurance business and how ingenious insurance fraud can be are interesting as well. The puzzle takes awhile to solve, . . . and I think I'll just stay the heck away from little New Hampshire towns.
Rated by buyers 
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I once accidently got a subscription to "GQ". I found it very interesting, since apparently what men want most is to be like James Bond. Drop a man off in a strange city and he wants to go to the right restaurant, order the right drink, have woman throw themselves at him, and most of all, win the admiration of other good men. Oh, and fight evil, too.
Thomas Perry want to help you with this. He not only wants to tell you the right drink, he wants you to win the respect of the bartender ("The Pursuit"), to successfully hide from the Mafia ("Butcher's Boy"), and to become the perfect mass-murderer ("Sleeping Dogs"). His books are practically how-to manuals for coolness, as long as you don't let sissy things like morality get in your way. In this book, "Death Benefits", he wants to show you how wrong you are to want a secure job at an insurance company when you could be chasing criminals across the continent with your dashing boss, limitless expense account, and adoring female colleague.
The book has an interesting 3-part structure, starting when young innocent John Walker is lured away from his cubicle when a former girlfriend disappears and is accused of fraud; he agrees to help the free-lance investigator Max Stillman because he wants to clear the woman of involvement in the crime. While doing that, he has to help out at the company's Florida branch when a hurricane comes roaring in, and while there, stumbles upon clues that lead him to a small New England town where the solution to all his questions may lie..... Walker is an engaging character, and you can't help but root for him to "find himself" as he solves these mysteries. The problem is that Perry finally over-reaches with the small New England town, stealing his plot, improbably, from H.P. Lovecraft, with regrettable results.
If you aren't a "GQ" kind of man, you might even get tired of Max Stillman, who fights crime with methods the police aren't allowed to use, and triumphs over evil while making loads of money. He's not even slightly believable, so it may seem a waste of time following his exploits and writing down tips in case *you're* ever a free-lance crime-fighter. I personally prefer the old-fashioned police procedural, where I may learn something real about crime and punishment.
Rated by buyers -
This was a good read. It wasn't a story in which you could predict what was going to happen. I enjoyed it. I also liked the Jane Whitefield novels by this author.
Rated by buyers 
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I have been gobbling up Thomas Perry novels ever since discovering his Jane Whitfield series, so I only glanced at the cover when I picked this one up from the bin. I have to confess I was let down when I saw that it was about the insurance industry--what could be more boring? But "boring" is exactly the wrong word to use to describe this wonderfully exciting novel. I was hooked from the very first few pages and just could not put it down. This is one of those suspense thrillers where you love the characters and are so swept up in the story you forget to make dinner for yourself. The disappearance of a woman who looks as if she is involved in a scheme to peculate millions leads a former lover on a quest to uncover her fate, and he soon finds himself embroiled in a deep conspiracy. This is believable, a book about greed and love, that will fascinate you.
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