Rip It -- wherein I take a weird, riveting, or downright freaky news story and offer it up as worthy of novelization or film adaptation -- is now a recurring feature on my blog.
You faithful readers will no doubt remember the first Rip It installment, where I poked innocent fun at an all-knowing, all-controlling tech/spy firm. Not sure what I was thinking there. I'll be more careful this time.
This week, an AP news article, dateline Iowa, caught my eye. Some lucky guy won the lottery. Over $14 million. But instead of turning in his ticket right away, he waited. For almost an entire year. In fact, he waited until two hours before the forfeiture deadline. And he sent a team of lawyers, representing a “shadowy New York trust” to collect the winnings.
This went down on Friday afternoon, so the details are still sketchy. Iowa Lottery officials don’t know who, exactly, the winner of the lottery is. All they have is the shadowy footage of someone purchasing that winning ticket at a convenience story in Des Moines over a year ago. But before close of business Friday, lottery officials started fielding calls from several quick-thinking, industrious people who claimed the ticket was theirs. It had been stolen.
Once I read all this, my mind started jumping to fantastic conclusions. Surely, the winner is the lone survivor of a group of coworkers -- no, friends! no, family members! -- who went in together to buy a ticket. While they waited to come forward until they could decide how to split the money, greed got in the way. The lucky winners started turning up dead.
This would make a fantastic book. A best-selling book. A book like A Simple Plan.
Scott Smith's A Simple Plan, is a gorgeously-written piece of suspense. An honest, hardworking accountant, his no-good brother, and the brother’s even less-good friend stumble upon a duffle bag stuffed with millions of dollars. They decide to keep it.
The plan is simple: They’ll wait things out, then divvy up the cash once the police stop searching for the missing money. But of course, simple plans have a way of getting really complicated really fast.
Smith takes us down a path where we readers imagine we might go. Until suddenly, our accountant hero starts making bad decisions. His actions go from white to gray to darkest, most sinister black.
It’s a wonderful read. And I hope for the sake of our unknown lottery winner, it’s just fiction.
