Death Benefits

January 1, 2001
Perry (Blood Money; The Face Changers) serves up a clever entertainment (in the Graham Greene sense of the word) set in the high-stakes insurance world. After a deliberately ambiguous prologue (just why is Ellen Snyder going to an L.A. airport hotel before dawn?), we learn that Ellen, working out of the Pasadena office of a prestigious San Francisco insurance company called McClaren's, recently authorized a 12$- million death benefit payment to a man who turned out to be an imposter. Now both the imposter and Ellen have navished, and McClaren's has called in mysterious operative Max Stillman to investigate the apparent conspiracy to defraud. Stillman oh-so-deftly draws young John Walker, an analyst in the main San Francisco office, into the investigation. Walker cooperates with Stillman because he doesn't believe Ellens's guilty; he's still a little bit in love with her from their training class days, although Ellen's career plans left no room for more than a casual interoffice romance. Casual is the operative word here: a casual remark from Walker to an enigmatic computer hacker named Serena leads to a seriously steamy interlude. And casual is the best way to describe Perry's seemingly effortless method of developing character and building suspense. His style is so assured as to be invisible, seamlessly supplying plot and character information as the chase leads from California to Chicago, Miami and finally a small town in New Hampshire. Though the finale echoes the premise of a particular Dachiell Hammett story, everything else feels as fresh as dawn. (Jan. 16) Forecast: Perry won an Edgar for The Butcher's Boy, and Metzger's Dog was New York Times Notable Book of the Year. This is his finest novel yet and, if sold with enthusiasm, could chart significant numbers. The bold evocative, b&w jacket will help, as will the four-city author tour.

September 1, 2000
Here, Perry takes a break from Jane Whitefield. John Walker, who works for McClaren Life and Casualty, gets more than he bargained for when he is asked to investigate a large death benefit paid out to the wrong person.

Copyright 2000 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from October 15, 2000
Edgar Award-winning Perry is the kind of writer who can make any subject enthralling. Here, he breathes excitement into the life of insurance agents, romance into examining columns of figures, and suspense into office cubicle life. Perry also debuts an unlikely but engaging pair of sleuths: hard-bitten, middle-age claims investigator Max Stillman and the just-out-of-college, appealingly confused young data analyst John Walker. Stillman is called into the home office of McClaren's Life and Casualty after the discovery that $12 million in death benefits has been paid to an imposter and that the insurance agent who authorized the payment has disappeared. The mystery expands when the missing agent, a lost love of Walker's, is found murdered. From the cinematic opening scene, which follows the doomed woman to an undisclosed appointment, through the threading of Stillman and Walker through a labyrinth of figures and deals, Percy never lets up on the suspense. Masterful.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2000, American Library Association.)