CRIMINAL KARMA. By Steven M. Thomas. Ballantine Books. 257 pages. $25.
Rob Rivers loves his job. He's a crook -- and he's OK with that. Matter of fact, he doesn't see his profession as being very different from most others.
As he so succinctly says, "The worlds of business and government were packed like a college student's Volkswagen with crooked connivers who, unlike me, topped their sundae of sins with the pickled cherry of hypocrisy. I knew I was a bad guy, and tried to be as nice about it as I could." And, "Stealing has an honorable history and isn't necessarily a spiritual dead end. Among other things, it supports the dictum that people shouldn't get too attached to their stuff." And Rob has expensive taste, evidenced by the Cadillac he drives and the high-class hotels he loves. "Even after several years of patronizing them as a crook and customer, doing my part for the GDP by putting stolen money back into circulation, luxury hotels still gave me soul satisfaction, made me feel like I'd accomplished something that my father never did."
These examples illustrate the playful tone of the story as well as give an inside view into the weird workings of this criminal's mind.
The story opens mid-scene in the rolling hills of southern California. Rob and his partner, Reggie, are tailing a woman who is in possession of their next hoped-for paycheck: a diamond necklace worth a quarter million dollars. But Reggie has trouble staying on task, a clean swipe and exit are not to be had, and the devious duo find themselves in an all-out fight for survival when the woman's bodyguard walks in on Rob mid-heist. Undeterred, Rob wants to have another go at stealing the jewels, which he discovers now belong to someone named Baba Raba.
So when a local homeless man tells Rob that Baba Raba is a guru with a nearby ashram, Rob is off to case the joint. In the process, he becomes infatuated with a young woman employed at the ashram, and with the original owner of the diamonds. The setting of the ashram puts Rob into circumstances showing not only that he is well versed in Hindu philosophy, but also that he takes much of it seriously, which, besides showing Rob to be an eccentric mix of criminal and enlightened being, adds to the SoCal quirkiness of the book.
Baba Raba, meanwhile, proves to be a fraud who uses his charisma to control a brothel of adoring young women -- pimping them out to high-level politicians and the ultra-rich while he amasses worldly wealth to finance his materialistic objectives.
The format for this story borders on detective noir. The protagonist, like noir detectives, imbues the story with his personal perceptions as a wise-cracking, street-smart narrator with a big heart who spends a lot of his time tracking down clues.
But that's where the similarities end. The lighthearted glee with which our criminal hero performs his work, plus the upbeat, almost carnival atmosphere of the Venice Beach setting where much of the story takes place, is anything but noir. Early in the book, I expected Criminal Karma to be nothing more than a madcap caper story. Halfway through the book I began to realize that the real story was not about a thief's efforts to take what was not his, but a silly, entertaining tale of a man who shares the goodness that defines him with deserving characters in need.
Steven Beach is a writer who lives in Lawsonville.
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