The Foolish Immortals

Description for THE FOOLISH IMMORTALS by Paul Gallico: JOE SEARS, age thirty-six, smart, fast, experienced---and a failure---was three hundred dollars away from being rock-bottom, stony broke and no prospects.  HANNAH BASCOME was said to be the richest woman in the world and at the age of seventy-six feared only two things:  death and taxes. Joe needed a Big Idea to get back on his feet and when he read a newspaper account of how Hannah Bascombe wanted to outlive the government to keep her fortune from them, Joe decided to go to work.  Armed with some convincing Biblical facts on longevity, and in partnership with a young Polish Jew names Ben-Isaac Levi who had a learned uncle in Israel, Joe set out for his initial interview with Hannah, full of confidence.  But Joe hadn't reckoned with Clary Adams, Miss Bascombe's beautiful secretary-companion, who saw the transparency of his scheme right away and did her best to keep him from seeing her employer.  Joe, on the other hand, saw through