The Policy

To young financial analyst Alex Tynan, her company's roaring success in the health insurance business seems too good to be true, and when her employers' actions turn deadly, she resolves to expose them. By the author of Omega.

How does a third-rate life insurance company in America's smallest state stop losing money and start raking in profits? They cheat. And kill. Take a brilliant scam that makes big bucks for top execs, a foolproof plan to move millions of dollars nearly risk-free into health-care (so credible that readers will suspect their own insurers), a deadly security enforcer?and add a poor 20-ish beauty fresh from grad school to gum up the works?and you get a top-notch thriller. Rhode Island's Provlife has skyrocketing profits and the lowest payouts in the industry when it makes a move into health insurance. Lovely Alex Tynan, a lowly new actuary, stumbles into a suspect stat, asks the wrong people the right questions and gets her bosses' attention in a bigger way than she imagined. A top v-p's fatal "accident" sends his secret mistress to Alex with tales of millions and a stolen computer printout. After the mistress turns up drowned, Alex unravels the computer text, dodging killers up to the final shoot-out in a Newport mansion. Assured writing and a sublimely sneaky imagination casts an actuary (arguably the mousiest occupation on the books) as the star of this nail-biter. The wintry Rhode Island setting is cut like a Cranston accent, while cold corporate games, masquerading as camaraderie, cast an icy menace throughout the proceedings.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Intelligently crafted thriller that succeeds at making the most monotonous industry in America fascinating and believably menacing. This third suspense tale from Lynch steps away from the medical focus of his previous work (Omega, 1997; Carriers, 1995) to explore the tedious affairs of a distinguished Providence, Rhode Island, insurance company. The potential for boredom is great, especially since Lynch's heroine, Alexandra Tynan, is a number-cruncher specializing in actuarial studies. But, luckily, Lynch has a reporter's eye for telling detail. The story opens on a cozy Christmas when the rest of the world lolls in holiday sentiment but insurance executive Michael Eliot frets about the imminent car accidents and slip-and-fall injuries due to increased snowfall. When hes informed that a routine analysis of his genetic makeup indicates the likelihood of a deadly disease, Huntingtons Chorea, Eliot decides to escape his dull job. He converts his assets to cash, only to die a week later in an apparently accidental electrocution. Alex Tynan, an appropriately young, brilliant analyst, was friendly with Eliot's lover, Liz Foster. Eager to console her shattered friend, Alex notices an attach case left by Eliot in Liz's care. Liz opens the case to find money and securities, winning the attention of the chief claims investigator and Donald Grant, the first of several bad guys. Alex smells a rat when her friends and fellow executives begin to disappear or suffer fatal accidents at a rate suspiciously above average. Could all this have anything to do with a genetic-screening lab whose margin of error is much too wide, or are lies and statistics covering up an even darker scam? A well-balanced examination of the hypocrisy, bad science, and old-fashioned greed that driveand cripplethe American insurance industry. -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

In this new medical thriller from the author of the best-selling Carriers, strange things start to happen when a life insurance company begins offering healthcare coverage.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Lynch is the author of two best-sellers, Carriers (1995) and Omega (1997). In the provocative words of the publisher, these two novels explore "the dark places where medical technology collides with terror." His latest novel is a story of murder and greed, and the villain is not just one person but actually a whole enterprise: a life insurance company! It seems that highly profitable ProLife wants to expand into health-care coverage and sets its sights on the HMO industry in Massachusetts. But the heroine of the tale, Alexandra Tynan, a company analyst, gets wind of some wrongdoing and starts checking confidential records. What she finds is a vast money-laundering scheme that involves banks in Switzerland and Grand Cayman, deaths made to look like accidents, a generation of fraudulent claims, and $125 million in bogus payouts. Lynch is an imaginative spinner of suspense. If many of his readers, all of whom will flock to his latest book, did not trust insurance companies before, they will now be scared to death by them. George Cohen