Mark Knopfler, Rüdiger and Me

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I recently wrote a short story called Rudiger.  I titled it and created the main character, John Rudiger, based on emotions evoked by a song called Rüdiger by Mark Knopfler.   For those of you who don’t know him by name, Mark Knopfler is better recognized as the front man, guitarist and creative force behind the now disbanded rock group, Dire Straits.  Rüdiger is from Knopfler’s first solo album, Golden Heart.  Rüdiger has a haunting melody and soft backing instruments and vocals behind Knopfler’s trademark lead guitar and gravelly voice with lyrics that linger.

A link to Knopfler performing the song on Youtube in 1996, when it was released, is here: http://tinyurl.com/423d85w

The melody and pace of the song always called to mind the image of someone skulking around with something to hide.  For years I’ve thought of writing a story about a crook hiding out in the Caribbean from the authorities, and every time I thought about it the song, Rüdiger, played in my head.  So, I wrote the story.

In it, John Rudiger is a fugitive financier living under an alias in the Caribbean, because he ran off with close to $100 million from his hedge fund ten years ago.  He's now down to his last $2 million.  Katie Dolan, a lawyer with the US Attorney's Office in New York, is sent to Antigua to try to get enough evidence to extradite Rudiger back to the US to stand trial.  Rudiger recruits her to help him retrieve $50 million of stolen bearer bonds he can’t get otherwise get out of a safe deposit box in New York.

Katie is no dope, and neither is Rudiger, and each one has to figure out who's scamming who as they work their plan to sneak the bonds out from under the nose of Charlie Holden, Katie's boss, the Assistant US Attorney in New York (a character reprised from my Wall Street novel, Bull Street), who's wise to both of them.

I enjoyed the characters and writing the story so much that I’m creating a series out of it, called the White Collar Crime Stories.  Rudiger and Katie will be back, and other shady types will be introduced as well.  I hope you’ll give Rudiger a try.

Rudiger is a 10,000 word short story, the first in the White Collar Crime Stories.

Read an excerpt from Rudiger

Buy Rudiger

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To John Glenn and Mrs. Slocum

Today was the 50^th anniversary of John Glenn’s orbit of the earth, the first by an American. It was also the 50^th anniversary of the first story I recall ever writing. Mrs. Slocum, my fifth grade teacher at Mt. Tabor School, gave us the assignment to write an essay about Glenn’s historic spaceflight on that day. She wasn’t more specific than that—it just had to be about Glenn’s spaceflight. I remember pondering over what to write for a while without coming up with an idea, then started writing when Mrs. Slocum said we had 15 minutes left, putting down the only thing that came to mind.

It was a story about seeing Glenn sitting on the steps of the Mercury capsule, looking dejected (I’m sure I didn’t use that word). I asked him what was wrong and he told me he’d locked himself out of the space capsule and had no way to get back in, and no way to get home again. I told him not to worry and tossed him a skeleton key. He thanked me, unlocked the door to the capsule and went in. He waved to me through the window as he continued on his way, orbiting the earth and finally splashing down safely.

I remember walking home that afternoon with second thoughts about my “essay,” afraid I’d get in trouble. The Glenn flight seemed to be the only thing anybody talked about on the way home from school, all we talked about at dinner and the only thing on television that evening. I couldn’t get away from it, and kept thinking about Mrs. Slocum sitting in front of the TV watching Glenn on the news, reading our essays, getting to mine and saying to herself, “What’s this? This isn’t an essay.” I had visions of getting my story back the next day with a “C” (that was the worst I could imagine, never having gotten one that I can recall up to that point). I went to sleep thinking, “Oh, man. A ‘C,’ Mom and Dad are going to be mad.”

When I got to school the next day I was still anxious.  Mrs. Slocum went about our lessons the usual way, never referring to the essay on Glenn.  It wasn’t until after lunch that she handed them out.  I sat about halfway back in my row, and the wait was excruciating as the kids in front of me passed them back. When it arrived I was thrilled: an ‘A.’ Mrs. Slocum even mentioned my story to the class, saying she thought it was a clever approach or something like that. I took it home and proudly showed it to my Mom, who also thought it was great.

Mom saved it for years, every once in a while showing it to a neighbor.  Mrs. Hutchinson, as I recall, pretended not to have read the story when Mom showed it to her the second time. It got to the point that I started to cringe whenever Mom brought it up with one of the neighbors around. Even so, as I write this I remember thinking back to that story many times over the years as the first evidence that I might have the inclination to be a writer one day.

Merry Christmas to Janet and Hank Lender

I ran a post on September 2nd, which would have been my father's 88th birthday, entitled "Hank Lender's Photographic Legacy."  I've reproduced the post below, with the addition of the cover photo I used for Vaccine Nation, my current thriller.  That photo, from the dock at Mom and Dad's house on Twin Lakes, PA, was the last he ever took.  Mom passed away a year and a half ago, and we sold the lake house just last week.  Now the photo has extra meaning.   Merry Christmas, Mom and Dad.

Copyright 2005 by Herman J. Lender

Dad was an accomplished man on many levels, including having a good sense of humor.  I was with him when Dr. Kimmel, his cancer surgeon, visited him the night before his final surgery.  The odds weren't good, and one of Dr. Kimmel’s final comments was that Dad’s chances of survival were, "miniscule."  After Dr. Kimmel left, Dad said, "Well, at least I don't have to worry about running out of money."

"The Man in White"
Copyright 2005 by Herman J. Lender

Then he got serious.  He made a rueful comment about "all this knowledge" he'd accumulated, and that it would pass on with him.  Dad seemed to be interested in just about everything—classical music, photography, opera, The Beatles, bread baking, gardening, finance, running; the list is endless—and after high school was totally self educated.  We talked about his legacy and I made the point that the knowledge he accumulated, his interest in things, and his intense approach to learning about them was something that would be carried on through his four sons and all his grandchildren.  Ironically, one thing we didn't talk about was his photography, a life-long interest of his.

Copyright 2005 by Herman J. Lender

My brothers and I grew up hearing about Leicas, Nikons, Hasselblad's, telephoto lenses, light meters and f-stops.  Dad built basement darkrooms in each of the three houses in Mt. Tabor we lived in growing up, then another in New Canaan after I went off to college.  We all experienced the magic of going into the darkroom with Dad and watching under a dim yellow bulb as Dad's 35mm black-and-white images appeared in the developer bath.  He taught us how to pick up a photo from the developer bath by the corner with the plastic tweezer, let it drain, then dunk it in the fixative, then in the water bath.  Sometimes I detect a scent that reminds me of those chemicals and it always takes me back to those days.

After Mom died a year ago, we went through all of Mom and Dad's things to close up her apartment.  They had tons of his framed prints on the walls and stacked in boxes in the closets; they’re still sitting in my attic because my brothers and I haven't finished divvying them up.  Most of Dad's 35mm negatives and his color slides are upstairs in their house at Twin Lakes.  But after we closed up Mom's apartment, I put all of Dad's digital collection—he converted to digital in 2000—on 16 GB USB flash memory drives and sent one to each of my brothers.  So that's another part of Dad's legacy we can all carry on.

Copyright 2005 by Herman J. Lender

The cover photos for all three of my books—Trojan Horse, The Gravy Train and Bull Street—are Dad's.  Dad's originals are presented here, before I cropped and Photoshopped the first two so the lettering would stand out on the covers.  Most think the pictures are of Wall Street, which was the image I intentionally tried to evoke based on the content of my books, but they're actually of Second Avenue and the 59^th St. Bridge, taken from the balcony of Manette’s and my 24^th floor apartment at 58^th St. and Second Avenue in New York City.  Dad titled the photo for the Trojan Horse cover, at top left, "The Man in White."  If you look closely, you can see a man dressed completely in white jaywalking through the heavy traffic (he’s inside the “D” of “Lender” on the book’s cover).  The photo for the cover of The Gravy Train, at center, is about the same shot taken at night.  The Bull Street cover photo is at left, a night shot of the 59^th St. Bridge.

Vaccine Nation--In the Tradition

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My new thriller, Vaccine Nation, is a fast-paced action thriller designed to entertain, but it also explores the very real issues in the current debate over vaccine safety in the mandatory U.S. National Immunization Program.  The book is now available on Amazon for pre-order for delivery November 22^nd.  Please click on the book cover to order.

In Vaccine Nation, Dani North is a filmmaker who just won at the Tribeca Film Festival for her documentary, The Drugging of Our Children, a film critical of the pharmaceutical industry.  She’s also just started work on a new documentary on autism.  When a pharmaceutical industry vaccine researcher hands her smoking gun evidence about the U.S. National Immunization Program seconds before he’s murdered right in front of her, Dani finds herself implicated and pursued by the police.

Dani realizes what she’s been handed could have crucial implications on upcoming hearings by a Senate committee.  A key issue the Senate committee will consider is whether Congress should continue the immunity it granted in 1986 to the pharmaceutical industry for claims by parents on damage to their children from the U.S. National Immunization Program. That puts Dani on the run in a race to understand and expose the evidence.  That is, before the police can grab her, or Grover Madsen, a megalomaniacal pharmaceutical industry CEO, can have her hunted down by his hired killers.  Madsen knows exactly what Dani has and how explosive it is for the pharmaceutical industry: it has the potential to make the tobacco industry’s lawsuits and subsequent multi-billion dollar settlements seem like routine slip-and-fall cases.  Madsen uses all his company’s political and financial resources to track Dani.

The book’s pace is intended to be reminiscent of Six Days of the Condor (and the film it spawned, Three Days of the Condor), or Hitchcock’s North by Northwest.  The action of Vaccine Nation occurs over four breathtaking days.

The current debate in the U.S. on vaccine safety portrayed in the novel is real.  My primary inspiration for writing Vaccine Nation was my exposure to the vaccine debate through my fiancé’s work as a documentary filmmaker in the health-related field, including films on ADHD and related drugging of children, and on vaccines and autism.  The facts in Vaccine Nation are accurate, based on my exposure to them through Manette’s films and my own research.  People will find some of them shocking.  For example, in 1986, Congress granted immunity to the pharmaceutical industry for liability related to their vaccines for the National Immunization Program.  Vaccines in the childhood vaccination schedule contain toxic substances like aluminum, formaldehyde and the chemical compound in anti-freeze.  The flu shot still contains thimerosal, a preservative that is 49.6% mercury.

The controversy represented in Vaccine Nation surrounding the safety and side effects of vaccines, and vaccines’ suspected relationship to the autism epidemic are still real.  The debate on vaccine safety is ongoing and increasing: recent CDC statistics show that 10% of parents (up from 2% to 3%.) are avoiding or delaying vaccinating their children because of concerns about vaccine safety.

As such, Vaccine Nation is a dramatization of this debate, presented in the form of a thriller that will hopefully both entertain you and make you think.

Read first chapter of Vaccine Nation

Buy Vaccine Nation

Visit David Lender's website

Vaccine Nation and the Vaccine Safety Debate

Click cover to buy on Amazon

My new thriller, Vaccine Nation, is a fast-paced action thriller designed to entertain, but it also explores the very real issues in the current debate over vaccine safety in the mandatory U.S. National Immunization Program.  The book is now available on Amazon for pre-order for delivery November 22^nd.  Please click on the book cover to order.

In Vaccine Nation, Dani North is a filmmaker who just won at the Tribeca Film Festival for her documentary, The Drugging of Our Children, a film critical of the pharmaceutical industry.  She’s also just started work on a new documentary on autism.  When a pharmaceutical industry vaccine researcher hands her smoking gun evidence about the U.S. National Immunization Program seconds before he’s murdered right in front of her, Dani finds herself implicated and pursued by the police.

Dani realizes what she’s been handed could have crucial implications on upcoming hearings by a Senate committee.  A key issue the Senate committee will consider is whether Congress should continue the immunity it granted in 1986 to the pharmaceutical industry for claims by parents on damage to their children from the U.S. National Immunization Program. That puts Dani on the run in a race to understand and expose the evidence.  That is, before the police can grab her, or Grover Madsen, a megalomaniacal pharmaceutical industry CEO, can have her hunted down by his hired killers.  Madsen knows exactly what Dani has and how explosive it is for the pharmaceutical industry: it has the potential to make the tobacco industry’s lawsuits and subsequent multi-billion dollar settlements seem like routine slip-and-fall cases.  Madsen uses all his company’s political and financial resources to track Dani.

The book’s pace is intended to be reminiscent of Six Days of the Condor (and the film it spawned, Three Days of the Condor), or Hitchcock’s North by Northwest.  The action of Vaccine Nation occurs over four breathtaking days.

The current debate in the U.S. on vaccine safety portrayed in the novel is real.  My primary inspiration for writing Vaccine Nation was my exposure to the vaccine debate through my fiancé’s work as a documentary filmmaker in the health-related field, including films on ADHD and related drugging of children, and on vaccines and autism.  The facts in Vaccine Nation are accurate, based on my exposure to them through Manette’s films and my own research.  People will find some of them shocking.  For example, in 1986, Congress granted immunity to the pharmaceutical industry for liability related to their vaccines for the National Immunization Program.  Vaccines in the childhood vaccination schedule contain toxic substances like aluminum, formaldehyde and the chemical compound in anti-freeze.  The flu shot still contains thimerosal, a preservative that is 49.6% mercury.

The controversy represented in Vaccine Nation surrounding the safety and side effects of vaccines, and vaccines’ suspected relationship to the autism epidemic are still real.  The debate on vaccine safety is ongoing and increasing: recent CDC statistics show that 10% of parents (up from 2% to 3%.) are avoiding or delaying vaccinating their children because of concerns about vaccine safety.

As such, Vaccine Nation is a dramatization of this debate, presented in the form of a thriller that will hopefully both entertain you and make you think.

Read first chapter of Vaccine Nation

Buy Vaccine Nation

Visit David Lender's website

Union Square

They have a farmers’ market in Union Square in New York City.  Manette once told me that famous chefs go there to purchase organic produce for their restaurants.  About a month later she told me the same thing.  The next month, too.  And the next month.  It's become a standing joke between us that any time anyone repeats herself, we tell the story about the famous chefs shopping for organic produce in Union Square.

We both watched an episode of the Dog Whisperer in which Cesar counseled a couple who owned a neurotic German Shepherd.  It seems the reason the Shepherd was frantic was because it was unable to fulfill its purpose in life.  Cesar gave it a backpack to carry around bottles of water--he must've seen the same cartoons I did as a kid where the St. Bernards had casks of brandy around their necks--and the dog was cured.

Styles isn't neurotic.  He knows his purpose.  So do we.  It's balls.

He chases them down and brings them back in the driveway.  Now that the pool is closed, he roams the entire back yard, running across the pool cover if necessary to retrieve them.  He chases them down at Staib Park, where the neighbors have an informal dog park at 5 p.m. every day.  There, Zac can throw the ball a few hundred feet and Styles tears after it to the amazement of everyone.  When he was a puppy he was fast.  Now he's unbelievable.  I can’t remember if Superman had a dog, but if he did, it would be Styles.

Styles in the goal

He’s also a soccer goalie between the kitchen and the dining room.  Any time of day he’ll stand there, in the doorway, his goal, waiting, poised to save a shot kicked at him.  He’ll slam his feet together to stop a rug-burner, or snap a lifted shot out of the air in his mouth.  If he isn’t in position, from any room in the house you say, “Get in the goal,” and he’s there in a flash.  We ask the neighboring kids, Nikki and Tina, to come over a few times a month, usually when we’re out, to play ball with Styles.  He knows that’s the only reason they’re there.  He goes crazy, jumping, then runs to find a ball and heads for the door.

Every other time I come into the house after playing ball with Styles out back I tell Manette that Styles' purpose in life is to chase balls.  Then she tells me about the famous chefs at Union Square.

Napping

Now that I’ve sent my edits back to Richard on Vaccine Nation, I’ve been catching up on my sleep, napping a lot, while I wait for him to send it back.  Yesterday, the day after Cindy’s birthday, I awakened from one and we went to Jack and Cindy’s to deliver her gifts and watch her open them.  It was about an hour before Styles' dinner time so I knew it would be a short visit, and I could get back to napping.   Styles’ dinner time didn’t matter.  I let Styles in their house and before I got one leg inside the door I heard his license and name tag clanging against Pita’s food bowls.  I forgot that Styles’ first objective on entering their house is always to ravage Pita’s food.  I’m sure he can’t understand why cats never finish their meals in one sitting, although he’s thrilled about it.  Both wet and dry bowls were almost gone by the time Manette rushed past me, grabbed him and placed the bowls on the counter. 

After Jack finished throwing treats to Styles—fifteen minutes or so, because Jack likes to make a game out of it and scatters them all over the living room so it takes Styles a while to sniff them all out—Cindy opened her gifts.  “Does it make me look fat?” she asked.  I thought of the Geico commercial in which Abraham Lincoln admits to Mary Todd that her dress does.  Cindy’s coat didn’t.  In my state of near narcolepsy—I was overcome with drowsiness and would have done anything for a snooze—I was tempted to tell her it did, just to see how she’d react.  I looked at Manette and smiled.  She gave me the partial juice for picking it out, but in truth I’d dozed at home while she and Zac had gone to Nordstrom’s. 

After Styles finished foraging the living room for treats, then wandered in and licked the kitchen floor, he settled on the sofa next to Manette, head in her lap.  She stroked his head between comments to Cindy about how to adjust the collar on the coat, then slid herself out from under him to help Cindy tie the belt.  Styles watched.  He doesn’t fidget at their house like he did when a puppy, and he and Pita have even learned to pass like ships on a calm sea.  He waited for Manette to sit back down and reassume her position as headrest.  Sometimes it about breaks Manny’s heart that he’s so loving with her.