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The Care Card

Name: The Care Card
Author: Darryl Bollinger
ISBN: 978-0-9848432-6-8

by Darryl Bollinger ‧ RELEASE DATE: Dec. 8, 2014

A nightmare scenario of an insurance industry run amok that makes for often entertaining—and troubling—reading.

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A hotshot hedge fund manager uncovers an insurance industry conspiracy in this gripping medical thriller.

A car accident sends Fort Myers, Florida, investment whiz Warren Thompson and his fiancee, Alex, to the hospital. Warren recovers quickly, but Alex succumbs to an infection and dies. Consumed by grief, he wonders whether the hospital staff did everything possible to save her. Staffers meet his pointed inquiries with ominous warnings not to look too closely at how treatment decisions are made. But Warren’s stubborn amateur sleuthing eventually leads him to the realization that USCare, the supposedly universal insurance program that’s a successor to the Affordable Care Act, doesn’t provide equal treatment for all. The wealthy are virtually guaranteed to receive the highest level of medical attention, while people on the lowest rungs of the insurance ladder would, according to one Harvard-educated doctor, “get better care at a Days Inn with a bottle of aspirin.” It turns out that physicians who deviate from the strict care guidelines are blackballed. Warren moves to sue insurance companies and expose the truth, but they’re willing to go to extremes to protect their business. Bollinger (The Pill Game, 2014, etc.) makes a few short leaps from the current real-life state of health care and insurance in America to create a sadly believable reality in which big business has nearly complete control over treatment decisions. Warren starts out as a self-absorbed businessman but evolves into an appealing protagonist as he learns to care about things other than making money. The supporting cast members are well-drawn, including Micah, a helpful nurse (and later, Warren’s love interest), and Sam Abrams, a “hippie doc” whose attempts to expose the truth about USCare cost him his career. However, the insurance industry villains are standard-issue bad guys in suits. The prose is also sometimes a bit verbose; trimmer sentences and paragraphs would have made this story zip along even faster. However, Bollinger delivers a clever, satisfying conclusion.

A nightmare scenario of an insurance industry run amok that makes for often entertaining—and troubling—reading.

Pub Date: Dec. 8, 2014

ISBN: 978-0-9848432-6-8

Page Count: 362

Publisher: JNB Press

Review Posted Online: Nov. 18, 2015

Review Program: Kirkus Indie

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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BETWEEN SISTERS

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 1, 2003

Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...

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Sisters in and out of love.

Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?

Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.

Pub Date: May 1, 2003

ISBN: 0-345-45073-6

Page Count: 400

Publisher: Ballantine

Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD

by Harper Lee ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 11, 1960

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A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.