Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    The Risk Profession
    The Risk Profession
    The Risk Profession
    Ebook64 pages49 minutes

    The Risk Profession

    By Larry Ivie and Donald E. Westlake

    3/5

    ()

    Read preview
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArchive Classics
    Release dateJul 1, 1997
    The Risk Profession

    Related to The Risk Profession

    Related ebooks

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Fantasy Fulfilled

      Feb 6, 2020

      Fantasy Fulfilled
      10 min read

    • Article

      The Many Hats Of Kate Atkinson

      Oct 1, 2018

      KATE ATKINSON PAYS CLOSE ATTENTION TO history—and how it repeats itself. In the best-selling writer’s 10th novel, Transcription, an unlikely spy, Juliet Armstrong, receives an assignment that will alter her life forever. With a complicated structure—

      3 min read

    • Article

      'See What Can Be Done' Is A Testament To The Breadth Of Lorrie Moore’s Intellect

      Apr 2, 2018

      See What Can Be Done, novelist and short story writer Lorrie Moore’s first nonfiction collection, takes its name from the words of Robert Silvers, the late editor of The New York Review of Books. When Silvers would send Moore a book for possible revi

      3 min read

    • Article

      Timeshare Nightmares: Don't Let This Happen to You

      Dec 10, 2018

      If you've booked a trip to Las Vegas, a Florida vacation destination or the Mexican Riviera, the odds are that upon checking into your hotel, you'll be offered anything from free breakfast, lunch or dinner to Disney World tickets just for attending a

      6 min read

    • Article

      Home

      Feb 28, 2019

      Home
      12 min read

    • Article

      A Tale That Must Be Told

      Mar 15, 2022

      A Tale That Must Be Told
      2 min read

    • Article

      Re-powering A Rose

      Sep 26, 2021

      Re-powering A Rose
      5 min read

    • Article

      Considering a Timeshare? Don't You Ever!

      May 1, 2019

      Over the past several years I've written about the nightmares that timeshare owners lived through, both when first purchasing -- often under physical and mental duress -- and then when attempting to get themselves out of their contracts. I never sai

      4 min read

    • Article

      Confessions Of A Bespoke Tailor

      Apr 17, 2023

      Confessions Of A Bespoke Tailor
      4 min read

    • Article

      An Acre Of Dreams

      Sep 21, 2023

      An Acre Of Dreams
      10 min read

    • Article

      Flipping Grief

      Nov 6, 2023

      Flipping Grief
      19 min read

    • Article

      ‘‘Each Day Is A Gift”

      Jun 19, 2019

      ‘‘Each Day Is A Gift”
      5 min read

    • Article

      Is Your Home Adequately Insured by the Right Company?

      May 10, 2019

      Nov. 8, 2018, began as a beautiful, sunny day for the residents of Paradise, Calif., a small town in rural Northern California. Within hours, most of the city was gone, with over 18,000 structures destroyed in the deadliest, most destructive wildfire

      3 min read

    • Article

      Hung Out To Dry On The Phone Line

      Jul 27, 2022

      Where do you stand on the matter of coincidence? God and Albert Einstein famously didn’t believe in it, the latter describing it as the former’s way of staying anonymous. But, much as I respect both chaps, I find myself horribly conflicted. What prov

      3 min read

    • Article

      Homegrown In Mendocino

      May 10, 2023

      Homegrown In Mendocino
      6 min read

    • Article

      ‘Would It Have Been Better To Stay In Yemen And Die There?’

      Nov 27, 2023

      A recent investigation by The Big Issue found that refugees across the country are being evicted into homelessness, forced onto the streets by government policy. Since our special report on 6 November (below) detailing fears of the coming wave, we’ve

      7 min read

    • Article

      Auld Lang Syne

      Dec 10, 2020

      Auld Lang Syne
      2 min read

    • Article

      He Can Fix It

      Dec 20, 2020

      I’ve repaired stuff all my life (“In a fix”, December 19): cars, bikes, appliances, fishing gear, my wife’s jewellery, shoes, etc. I kept a cheap clothes dryer going for 20 years by replacing bearings and belts. I must have saved thousands of dollars

      5 min read

    • Article

      STUMPERS Fiery Possibilities Or A Toothy Truth?

      Oct 30, 2021

      While Chris Ericson’s small cast-iron mystery tool from our August issue (pictured at right) has had him stumped, several of you have thrown your hats in the ring to help solve this riddle. Two likely possibilities have sifted to the top of the mail

      2 min read

    • Article

      Got an Invention? Don’t Fall for These Patent Scams

      Jan 14, 2021

      “Mr. Beaver, suffering from bad arthritis in my hands and nighttime leg cramps — charley horses — led me to inventing a battery-operated lime squeezer that I would like to market. “I was turned on to drinking tonic water, which contains quinine that

      3 min read

    • Article

      Death Cab For Cutie

      Nov 18, 2022

      Death Cab For Cutie
      3 min read

    Reviews for The Risk Profession

    3/5

    1 rating2 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 3/5
      A very short early Westlake In fact, I was surprised to see it listed as a separate title. SciFi mystery featuring an insurance company investigator charged with determining the validity of an asteroid miner's claim. Has a nice, if not totally unforeseeable, twist at the end. Perfect for making the time pass waiting for the dentist.
    • 3/5
      I listened to the librivox edition.

      I think it was a clever enough mystery - maybe readers of that genre would have been able to solve it but I didn't. I did like the attention to creative detail - maybe that's what made Westlake worthy to grow beyond pulp stories to become an author of repute.

    Book preview

    The Risk Profession - Larry Ivie

    The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Risk Profession, by Donald Edwin Westlake

    This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with

    almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or

    re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included

    with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org

    Title: The Risk Profession

    Author: Donald Edwin Westlake

    Illustrator: Ivie

    Release Date: October 29, 2008 [EBook #27089]

    Language: English

    *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE RISK PROFESSION ***

    Produced by Greg Weeks, Stephen Blundell and the Online

    Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net

    The men who did dangerous work had a special kind of insurance policy. But when somebody wanted to collect on that policy, the claims investigator suddenly became a member of ...

    Illustrated by IVIE

    The RISK PROFESSION

    By DONALD E. WESTLAKE

    Mister Henderson called me into his office my third day back in Tangiers. That was a day and a half later than I'd expected. Roving claims investigators for Tangiers Mutual Insurance Corporation don't usually get to spend more than thirty-six consecutive hours at home base.

    Henderson was jovial but stern. That meant he was happy with the job I'd just completed, and that he was pretty sure I'd find some crooked shenanigans on this next assignment. That didn't please me. I'm basically a plain-living type, and I hate complications. I almost wished for a second there that I was back on Fire and Theft in Greater New York. But I knew better than that. As a roving claim investigator, I avoided the more stultifying paper work inherent in this line of work and had the additional luxury of an expense account nobody ever questioned.

    It made working for a living almost worthwhile.

    When I was settled in the chair beside his desk, Henderson said, That was good work you did on Luna, Ged. Saved the company a pretty pence.

    I smiled modestly and said, Thank you, sir. And reflected to myself for the thousandth time that the company could do worse than split that saving with the guy who'd made it possible. Me, in other words.

    Got a tricky one this time, Ged, said my boss. He had done his back-patting, now we got down to business. He peered keenly at me, or at least as keenly as a round-faced tiny-eyed fat man can peer. What do you know about the Risk Profession Retirement Plan? he asked me.

    I've heard of it, I said truthfully. That's about all.

    He nodded. Most of the policies are sold off-planet, of course. It's a form of insurance for non-insurables. Spaceship crews, asteroid prospectors, people like that.

    I see, I said, unhappily. I knew right away this meant I was going to have to go off-Earth again. I'm a one-gee boy all the way. Gravity changes get me in the solar plexus. I get g-sick at the drop of an elevator.

    Here's the way it works, he went on, either not noticing my sad face or choosing to ignore it. The client pays a monthly premium. He can be as far ahead or as far behind in his payments as he wants—the policy has no lapse clause—just so he's all paid up by the Target Date. The Target Date is a retirement age, forty-five or above, chosen by the client himself. After the Target Date, he stops paying premiums, and we begin to pay him a monthly retirement check, the amount determined by the amount paid into the policy, his age at retiring, and so on. Clear?

    I nodded, looking for the gimmick that made this a paying proposition for good old Tangiers Mutual.

    The Double R-P—that's what we call it around the office here—assures the client that he won't be reduced to panhandling in his old age, should his other retirement plans fall through. For Belt prospectors, of course, this means the big strike, which maybe one in a hundred find. For the man who never does make that big strike, this is something to fall back on. He can come home to Earth and retire, with a guaranteed income for the rest of his life.

    I

    Enjoying the preview?
    Page 1 of 1