When a rich man meets his maker, I pause for few moments, not to mourn his life but to wonder what becomes of his wealth. Of no use to him now, is it buried with him? Like the pharaohs, he intends for it to accompany him in his next life? Is it inherited by his son? To do what with?
Buy a splendid car? A dozen cars? Build estates -- here, there, everywhere? An airplane, yacht, island? Have a trophy wife? A harem? Eat the best food and drink? Gamble? And leave it to his own son when he passes away?
Some leave it to the needy -- to further their education, as prizes for excellence. Or expand their business. Or help fight disease. Or leave it charities for their assorted causes.
Novelists have a field day penning stories about the choices made. In the course of which, they concoct plots that are possible albeit improbable.
A case in point is NYPD Red 5 by Yank author James Patterson The "Red" in the title refers to a segment of the New York Police Department assigned to protecting VIPs both domestic and foreign in the Big Apple. Kylie MacDonald and her partner Zach Jordan are the ongoing protagonists in this series.
They are given the case of an explosion at a fund-raising affair and of a woman celebrity on a Hudson River isle. Tops at their profession, the two sleuths are both told by the lady mayor to both carry on their investigations and treat the rich and powerful with kid gloves.
Patterson throws in a therapist who beds his patients, a kinky woman and a drug gang from Haiti. Perhaps most interesting to the reader, one of the gang recently emerged after 20 years in a Thai prison for trafficking in drugs. Though suspected, suicide bombers aren't involved.
Billionaires aren't pleasant characters here. Alcoholics and womanisers, money buys them anything they want. The millions they donate to the homeless is pocket money. Their hearts aren't in it.
Kylie and Zach are the enjoyable personae. How can he tell her he loves her when she isn't short of boyfriends? Haitian mafia?
The city of Lights
I was a backpacker back yonder, spending years covering more than 50 countries, well over 100 cities in them. On and off the beaten track, selling cod-liver-oil pills here, sleeping in Sikh temples there, contracting yellow jaundice elsewhere, I learned about my fellow man.
Inevitably, I matched my impressions of people and places with those who have been on the road earlier and written about it. To be sure, the times and circumstances are different, but by how much? I found that I had not one role model, but two: Richard Halliburton, for whom it was all an adventure, and George Orwell, for whom it was not.
Orwell, in Down And Out In Paris And London, immersed himself in the lower depths. Something I could never bring myself to do. His Paris isn't the Champs-Elysée and Eiffel Tower of music and song. Rather, its poverty.
Those sleeping under bridges in all weather, washing their rags in bistro bathrooms, begging for change. They aren't found on the screen. But there will always be that other Paris, at least in novels by Jojo Moyes.
Hers is the Paris of City of Lights fame. The French are painters, writers, lovers. And Champagne, an elixir with bubbles. Forget "See Naples and die"; remember "See Paris and live".
In mid-management in a plastics factory in London, Nell has girlfriends, a boyfriend, a mother reminding her that her biological clock is ticking, and she's bored to tears. There must be more to life than this.
The opportunity of a weekend in Paris comes up. The plot is predictable. The handsome boy's name is Fabian. A part-time waiter to pay for his garret while writing a book, it doesn't take long for cupid to show up. Champagne. Dancing on the bar. Pillowing.
Nell returns home only long enough to wish it adieu. What could be a happier ending than being a waitress/wife in Paris? Moyes' fans are doubtless lining up to buy tickets to the city of dreams. France's chamber of commerce is smiling all the way to the bank.
My impression of Paris is that the populace still regrets the passing of Napoleon Bonaparte, when French was the only language that counted and it was master of Europe. I think that Bangkok can do with such literary shots in the arm.
