Review: Paradise Lost
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 08 5, 2012
Rudiger, aka Steven Conklin, is a short story by David Lender. It begins in Antiqua when John Rudiger, running out of money and patience, is ready to hit the pool in what is to be another endless day in paradise. But not all is well in Paradise. Rudiger is bored, running out of money and in need of action, be it sex or scam. Having blown through most all of the forty million he stole in a Bernie Madoff-like Ponzi scheme, Rudiger knows he needs to do something fast. And that something is to somehow return to New York City and retrieve the remainder of his pilfered money, which is locked away in a safe deposit box and in the name of his missing wife.Katie Dolan arrives just in the nick of time, and in hot bikini to boot, to pique his interest. Fresh from U.S Attorney's Office, she is there to make a deal with Rudiger, or Conklin in his previous life. Yes, she's beautiful and yes, she's in need of money as well, and willing to do anything (wink, wink) to get it. Her father and brother, ex-firefighters and first responders to 9/11, had become sick from breathing in the toxic blast air. Her brother died years ago from his ailment, but her father is still alive. Although he doesn't have much time left on the planet, Katie is determined to make his last days comfortable. On the surface, Katie seems the perfectly perk U.S. Attorney, resolute and with high moral standards. But on the inside she is burning with righteous indignation at the lack of medical care her brother and father received after the World Trade Center terrorist attack. Yes, she has a plan, which includes playing both sides. If only she can gather up enough money to make her dad's last days peaceful, she'll feel as if she's done him right. Or will she?What happens next is fairy obvious genre machinations, but in the hands of talented author such as Lender the details come to life. Dolan and Rudiger make a deal, as expected, although even the most unsophisticated reader realizes that any deal struck with Rudiger is merely a vehicle to achieving his ends. Dolan knows that making a deal with a criminal like Rudiger is about as binding as dealing with the devil.The return to New York energizes Rudiger and we can see that it is not so much the money that fulfills him but the churning machine of capitalism and all its glorious substrata.Despite a few details that seem rather implausible, but necessary to moving the story along, Lender gives us an engaging albeit dark story in which no one can be trusted and personal ethics are fluid. Rudiger, on the surface, seems a glib cool cat concerned with little else other then pleasing his monstrous sense of self. And yet we know that his wife is missing, presumed murdered, and that he's undergone plastic and weigh loss reduction surgery in order to escape arrest and extradition. Rudiger seems to me not just a harmless white-collar criminal but a soulless monster willing to do anything to get what he wants and sate his unchecked ego. And sadly enough, Dolan succumbs to the same pernicious attitude, though it is rationalized by the righteous indignation of her father's condition. Sadly, she's in it for the dough too.The ending is predictable, but the ending is not the point. What seems on the surface to be a harmless caper about stealing back stolen fortunes, it is really a moral tale about the contagious nature of greed and the corruptibility of the human psyche. The heart and soul of American capitalism resides as much in the human heart as in its grandest city.