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21 of 22 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Superb urban noir crime story, April 16, 2008
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
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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
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?
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8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Lost and Found, June 19, 2008
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.
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