Dark Resurrection

Michael Payne is the City of Edmonton archivist and the co-author of A
Narrative History of Fort Dunvegan.

Art Swerdlowe’s life is not working out as he had hoped. He is on an
elevator heading for work in the World Trade Center on September 11,
2001, just as the building is struck. By sheer chance he escapes the
ensuing chaos with his life, with a briefcase a dying man gave to him,
and with the wallet of a colleague he tried to help. Recuperating in a
hotel after the horror, he realizes that the briefcase contains a
fortune in diamonds while the wallet offers him a chance to assume a new
identity. Art opts then and there to embark on a new life.

The story shifts to Vancouver Island years later. Elizabeth and Tom
Drummond are a conventional couple whose lives are about to be
transformed by two events. Tom, an architect, is hired by a wealthy and
flamboyant entrepreneur to design and build a dream house. Elizabeth
discovers that the strange man who has been following her is her
brother, Art Swerdlowe, whom she has not seen in decades. Her sisterly
affection overcomes her initial disgust with his actions since 9/11. She
and Tom later discover that a menacing private detective is also looking
for Art and, more specifically, the missing diamonds.

The plot twists at the end of Dark Resurrection recall a conventional
thriller, but the strong moral lesson about the corrupting power of
greed is more suggestive of a novel of ideas. The result is an
interesting hybrid.