The Policy

Rating:
Summary: Patrick Lynch Scores Again
Review: Both Omega and Carriers were absorbing, believable novels, and The Policy is no less effective. The plot is truly ingenious, craftily woven, a marvel of construction which reveals itself incrementally in a riveting manner. No way of second-guessing the outcome! However, Patrick Lynch (a pseudonym for two co-authors) has some difficulty in moulding the characters in his books. One does not quite get a clear image of the participants. Be that as it may, his (their!) three books to date deserve all the acclaim they have mustered, and I await the next book eagerly.

Rating:
Summary: Well-written
Review: I am an actuary, and when I accidentally stumbled across this book, I bought it more for the "joke factor." Come on, a thriller about actuaries?! I thought I would get some good laughs out of the author's complete lack of knowledge. Boy was I surprised! The book is very believable, and Lynch captured the personality of a typical actuary perfectly. Luckily for me I work in property and casualty insurance, not life/health so I don't have to worry about it coming true....

Rating:
Summary: Good book
Review: Most thrillers these days seem to fall into well-defined categories. As a result the scenarios, premises and even the plots start seeming pretty familiar pretty quickly. For this reason THE POLICY was for me a great treat. The world it sketched was absolutely believable and beatifully sketched, and I never really knew where the story was leading me. Only that things were going to get nastier and more disturbing as they went on. Which they did. A final bonus was that the end actually made me think, the way a real novel is supposed to. I recommend this to any lover of a good, original story.

Rating:
Summary: Scary as King but this is based on fact
Review: ProvLife is one of the country's leading life insurance companies. However, the firm wants to enter other markets and has chosen health insurance as a lucrative business. The company's plan is to take over the Massachusetts HMO market. They start by offering their own employees top rate health care for a reasonable cost. Soon, they expand their coverage and their strategic business objective suddenly appears to be within their grasp.

Alexandra Tynan works for ProvLife, evaluating medical data when she notices an alarming trend that makes her question the validity and reliability of the numbers she has been provided to analyze. She begins to investigate and soon realizes that the company's board of directors are making millions of dollars through bogus payoffs while deaths due to alleged accidents go off the actuary charts. As her bosses launder cash overseas, Alex may have uncovered a nefarious plot that could make her the next statistic.

As HMOs ma! ke headlines for their bottom line accounting decisions on health care, THE POLICY takes us one step beyond that scenario into what might seem like the unthinkable. Yet in the talented hands of Patrick Lynch the premise truly seems believable. The pace of the storyline is non-stop and ultra-speed, but should carry a warning label. The masses of us already having troubles with HMOs and other health insurance carriers need to have a tranquilizer handy because this novel will strike a chord of anger and anxiety. Anyone who has not read Mr. Lynch's previous thrillers (CARRIERS and OMEGA) need to because like this novel, the excitement continues long after the last page is completed.

Harriet Klausner

Rating:
Summary: A rich and intricate tale
Review: The plot is believable and I think someday this could happen. But the plot to me took a long time to develop and the author didn't disclose enough clues early on to keep me interested. For example, I knew the Medan Diagnostics corporation was tied to the ProLif corporation The only link I had was through Michael Eliot. The other clues linking these two corporations together were too abstract to decipher so I was lost. I thought Alex was making leaps in logic by making sense out of these incoherent clues. The insurance policy envelops and the letter openers were big clues along with the printouts. However, there wasn't enough information disclosed by the author to link them together. I am not feeble minded and I like mystery novels, but this novel is only interesting toward the end because I wanted it to be over.

Rating:
Summary: Good book
Review: This book is not an action packed page turner. It is more of a slowly unfolding mystery, which at times can be a little bit plodding. The atmosphere is gray and subdued, by design. The best part about this book is the lead protagonist. She is a three dimensional character: intelligent, determined, flawed in some ways, and refreshingly lacking the superhuman qualities of many lead protagonists in the thriller/mystery genre.

Rating:
Summary: pretty awful until 2/3 through
Review: This was a well written story that for some reason I didn't expect to grab me and yet it did. To be fair, I had read many of the reviews here at Amazon and it was the general praise that The Policy received that convinced me to buy the book and read it. Had I not visited this site first, I probably would've passed. Now, I'm glad I didn't. Alex Tynan is one of the neater female characters I have met in a book in quite some time. What I liked about her were the several dimensions the two writers who hide behind the pseudonym Patrick Lynch gave her. Like many of us, she has her flaws and has made her share of mistakes. She is not a one-dimensional superhero like we see in many of the bad techno-thrillers. With more than above average intelligence and a tenacity that creeps up on the reader as the novel progresses, Alex reminded me of the proverbial dog with a bone that they just won't give up. Alex is like that and that's what kept me glued to this book. Another interesting skill the authors brought to this storyline was that they picked a dull industry like life and health insurance and somehow, made it seem sinister and evil. Of course, industries themselves are not evil, but the people in them can be and sometimes are. To be sure, this is not a scary book or a true nail-biting page turner in the strictest sense of that label but there is a lot of tension and it grows throughout this novel. The authors did an outstanding job of creating and increasing that tension as the novel progressed. I haven't read any of the other books by the two folks who call themselves Patrick Lynch but rest assured, I most certainly will. These two writers have several other books out and I intend to track them down and gobble them up. Patrick Lynch, whoever you are, keep up the good work and keep the stories coming. You two seem to have a lot to say and some good story lines to use as your vehicles. Thanks for an enjoyable read.

Rating:
Summary: Good story on a scary topic
Review: You get a printout based on a sample of your DNA telling you that you have an inherited disease--even though you have no symptoms now--that will cause you to suffer a slow, agonizing death. Do insurance companies have a right to know this? Do they have the right to test you before issuing a policy? And what happens if this information is manipulated by corrupt people? All these questions are addressed in Patrick Lynch's novel. In this well-told story, we meet the ambitious actuary, Alex, her fast-lane boyfriend, Mark, and her stable mentor, Randal, all of whom play significant roles in answering these questions. The plot is fast-paced, and the characters are quite believeable. This is a great one or two day read--one of those "can't put down" books. Quite enjoyable.