The Finder: A Novel [Paperback]

Colin Harrison (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 26, 2009

Jin Li is a beautiful, driven young woman running a dangerous little operation. Manhattan corporations hire her for a simple but delicate task: to shred and destroy the reams of highly classified documents. But they don't know that she and her brother, Chen, have been using their discarded secrets to game the international markets, making a pile of cash. When someone at the Good Pharma corporation, whose stock is plummeting, uncovers the scheme, two of Jin Li's workers die a grisly death, and Jin is on the run. Her brother extorts Jin's old flame, Ray Grant--an ex-firefighter with a disturbing 9/11 past--to track her down. He'll have to comb every strata of New York, from the brutal Mexican mafia to the greed-fueled penthouse billionaires of Wall Street, to find her.

An intricate tale of avarice, corruption, and power, Colin Harrison's masterful new thriller is a "brilliantly executed novel" (The Baltimore Sun).

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. Set in New York City, this edgy thriller from Harrison (The Havana Room) showcases his extraordinary storytelling ability. Jin Li has been running a scam on Tom Reilly and his company, Good Pharma, by stealing information under the cover of a paper-shredding operation. She then passes it on to her brother, Chen, who uses it to make stock trades. Under pressure from a ruthless billionaire investor who stands to lose his fortune if Good Pharma fails, Reilly asks a shady underling to deal with the leak, resulting in the horrible murder of two of Li's Mexican employees. Li escapes and goes on the run. Li's former boyfriend, Ray Grant, is caught in the middle, hounded by Chen and the minions of Good Pharma, both of whom believe he knows Li's whereabouts. With the help of his dying father, a former cop, Grant must find Li or face the consequences. The action builds to a deeply satisfying conclusion involving a sadistic kidnapper and a stock market power play across two continents. (Apr.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

"Brilliant . . . recalls Tom Wolfe's best-selling The Bonfire of the Vanities, but this is a far darker story and a far more interesting one. Harrison’s Big Apple is rotten to the core."--The Washington Post

"Brutally effective . . . Harrison spins a fast-paced NYC crime novel. . . . Start reading this book and prepare to cancel all other plans for the next seven hours or so."--Entertainment Weekly (Grade: A)

"Harrison writes like Rambo on meth and throws in enough black humor to prove he's more brains than
brawn. . . . The Finder’s a keeper."--USA Today

"Colin Harrison's New York is an eye-for-an-eye, dog-eat-dog Darwinian world with similar map coordinates to Tom Wolfe's Manhattan and the Los Angeles of Raymond Chandler and James Ellroy. . . . A chilling, high-speed roller coaster of a ride that doubles as a sardonic sightseeing tour of the seamier side of New York City." --The New York Times

"A satisfying thriller canvassing and connecting New York's hedge-fund billionaires with illegal immigrants scraping by on menial labor."--The Christian Science Monitor

"Some of the best writing being done today . . . Harrison displays a depth of reportorial knowledge to awe Tom Wolfe. . . . Perhaps the equal of Richard Price."--Sun-Sentinel (South Florida)

"Colin Harrison writes shrewd thrillers that probe the far reaches of New York society. . . . An uncommonly astute writer."--The Seattle Times

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 336 pages
• Publisher: Picador; First Edition edition (May 26, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 031242888X
• ISBN-13: 978-0312428884
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.6 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (30 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #923,456 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

21 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Superb urban noir crime story, April 16, 2008

By 

Jerry Saperstein (Evanston, IL USA) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: The Finder: A Novel (Hardcover)

Those of you who remember movies like "Naked City" or fancy the noir crime thrillers of the late 1940s will feel immediately at home with Colin Harrison's "The Finders", which is frankly one of the best urban noir novels I've read in years.

New York, with its endless contrasts between rich and poor, elegance and crass, conflicting cultures all trying to get their piece of the American pie is the perfect setting for noir fiction and Harrison, a Brooklynite, plays it for all its worth. And, man, does he ever do it well!

In the high-rise office towers of Manhattan where "Masters of the Universe" contend for billions, young illegal Mexicans scurry about cleaning the detritus of the business at night under the supervision of Jin Li, a young, beautiful Chinese woman. Jin Li is more than she appears to be. She is, in fact, a key player in a global power play, something that becomes apparent when she takes an after work, middle of the night ride with two of her Mexican female workers. They part in a remote Brooklyn park when disaster in the form of truck bearing a load of excrement comes on the scene.

Jin Li escapes death and is pursued by a growing cast of characters. The good guy is Ray Grant, Jr., Jin Li's recent lover who still pines for her. Grant, Jr. is backed by his father, who is dying of cancer, a near-retirement NYPD detective and that's it. Against them and Jin Yi is a surprising number of bad guys, all of whom Harrison introduces flawlessly, each one racheting up the suspense level.

There are few writers with Harrison's skill and the ability to keep layering on plot twists. It is a delight to watch as we are introduced to Bill Martz, Tom Reilly, Chen, Victor, Richie, Violet, Montoya, Elliott and more, each contributing their bit of evil to the story without tripping over some other character.

Harrison deftly builds his main characters like Jin Li, Ray Grant, Jr., Bill Martz, Chen and the others largely through backstories and flashbacks. In less adept hands, this technique could be disastrous, but Finder pulls it off beautifully.

The suspense builds with each page as these characters pulled literally from different universes come together on a collision course. The ending is a bit of a stretch, but still totally acceptable.

If you like noir, you will love "The Finders". If you like suspense, crime or thriller novels, "The Finders" will have you turning pages. It is simply one of the best I've read in a while.

Jerry

19 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Stock markets function on the quaint theory that they are effective, July 12, 2008

By 

H. Schneider "Hamlet" (Pandistan) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Finder: A Novel (Hardcover)

Colin Harrison writes intelligent thrillers w/o a serial hero, maybe except New York and the wonders of globalization.
I liked the Havana Room a lot, and the Finder has the additional attraction of a China connection. The plot doesn't need to be summarized again, that has been done by Amazon and other reviewers.
CH has the ability to tell a not so unusual story in a fresh and surprising way. He stays away from the cliches and the stereotypes that make me drop many thrillers on similar subjects lost in boredom.
I deduct a star because I am not 100% convinced that the plot driver here would work in real life: the office cleaning company as industrial spy agent who feeds investors half around the world with the info that they need to manipulate the share prices of small startup companies in Wall Street. Well, I don't know. Also, there are some minor blunders about things Chinese, eg his handling of names.
But he hits the right tone for me and his protagonists make sense. Even the Chinese ones, though Li Jin's brother bothered me a bit. He looked too simplistic at first glance (the supersmart but overexposed criminal stock manipulator from a formerly poor family), but then, if you look at the bios of similar real life men and women, they are like that apparently.
And the underworld is remarkably diversified. We also meet the more conventional business models of the Mafia and the Mexican drugring.
The suspense is fueled by more than one line of uncertainty: what is happening to Jin? who is her hero Ray, really? which of the different ethnic gangs is the most evil? possibly the local rich boy?

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Lost and Found, June 19, 2008

By 

Nancy Martin (Pennsylvania (orig. NY)) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Finder: A Novel (Hardcover)

My introduction to Colin Harrison began with Manhattan Nocturne followed by The Havana Room and then one of his earlier books, Break and Enter (which most of his readers didn't love yet I enjoyed immensely). So I'm definitely a fan and look forward to reading anything by him. I think I would put this one on par with The Havana Room.

I read this on a recent trip to Vegas on a flight that should have taken four hours and ended up taking seven with all of the runway delays. Consequently, the book was started and finished in that one trip. There's nothing I like better than books that keep you on the edge of your seat, even though this time I was wearing a seatbelt so I knew I was secure.

This novel explores the far reaching effects of crime as its tentacles reach as far as China where the wheels begin to turn in a scheme involving a cleaning service and stealing information. It's elaborate and well thought out and it will take a firefighter, in the form of Ray Grant, Jr., to get to the bottom of it. Yes, you heard me right....he's a firefighter but his father was a former NYC detective, whose days are now numbered as he wages his war with cancer.

Harrison is very adept at drawing out his characters and introducing new characters who add to the story as opposed to confusing it. This one gives us a good mix but it's Ray Grant and Jin-Li, his ex-girlfriend, who will lead the charge, trying not to be found in her case and trying to find her in his case.

Usually I would give this book five stars but there was just something missing that I can't exactly put my finger on. It was gritty and riveting but, in the end, it did not find me.