Books: Corruption by Bankroll

THE FINAL BALL (255 pp.)—Gere/ Galser—Pantheon ($3.95).

There is a new monster at large in Germany today and its name is prosperity. That is the view of Gerd Gaiser, South German novelist, World War II flyer and sometime schoolmaster. His countrymen's real religion is materialism, he feels, and their real measure of success is possession. In this book, Novelist Gaiser tries to show that in such a society, good people can only be hurt, while the greedy are blissfully unaware of their own ugliness. Says one well-to-do mother to her well-padded daughter: "Ditta, one shouldn't breathe a word. But our Lord has...