Product Description

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #12066 in Books
• Published on: 2008-04-01
• Released on: 2008-04-01
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 336 pages

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.)
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Review
Praise for The Finder:

“Colin Harrison will have you gasping for breath in the eyeball-popping opening chapter of The Finder, his latest New York thriller, one unlikely to be distributed by the Tourism Bureau . . . Once again he's mucking about in the city's greedy underbelly in a pulsating novel that obscenely documents the gritty, ugly intersection of commerce and corruption . . . Harrison (The Havana Room, Afterburn) writes like Rambo on meth and throws in enough black humor to prove he's more brains than brawn.” —USA Today

“[Harrison] is an uncommonly astute writer.” — The Seattle Times

“In the brutally effective first chapter of The Finder, two Mexican women are locked in their car and asphyxiated with sewage piped through the sunroof. From there, Colin Harrison spins a fast-paced NYC crime novel that incorporates a crabby billionaire financier with prostate problems, a sadistic Italian thug, conniving Chinese businessmen, the Mexican Mafia, a philosophically minded physician, and the titular hero, a former firefighter who just wants to track down his girlfriend, who's gotten caught up in the mess. Start reading this book and prepare to cancel all other plans for the next seven hours or so. A.”—Entertainment Weekly

“[An] intelligent New York thriller . . . a complicated tale of the nasty world of today’s global capitalism. Here, almost everything, including love, is a lie, a performance, a manipulation designed to keep the big money flowing. In a lying world, hard information is essential, and the men at the top are willing to pay for it, even kill for it . . . Harrison is a wonderful descriptive writer.”—New York Times Book Review

“As I plan an upcoming trip to New York, thinking of the show I want to see, the museum I hope to visit, the jazz club I'd like to drop by, I am inhabiting a fantasy world that has nothing at all to do with the profoundly corrupt, endlessly dangerous New York of Colin Harrison's brilliant, deeply cynical new literary thriller. "The Finder" is a panoramic look at the linked lives of perhaps a dozen characters, from billionaire financiers to Mafia thugs, from Mexican teenagers with forged green cards to society matrons who gossip about a "wheelchair gigolo." ("Yes, he only -- you know -- does it with women in wheelchairs.") As a study of a decadent, rapidly declining New York, "The Finder" somewhat recalls Tom Wolfe’s 1987 bestseller "The Bonfire of the Vanities," but this is a far darker story and, to my mind, a far more interesting one. Harrison's Big Apple is rotten to the core.”—Washington Post,

“Now is definitely the time to thrill to writer Colin Harrison.”—New York Daily News,

“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. It’s a place where glossy corporate offices and glitzy penthouses float upon a nasty, bilge-filled river of power and ambition, where malice and murder and mayhem lurk beneath supposedly civilized exchanges about cool restaurants and expensive shrubbery and hot new investments. It’s a place where newly arrived immigrants from China and Mexico cross paths with highflying masters of the universe and mob-connected hooligans, a place where the newly globalized marketplace creates megadeals as well as mistrust, miscommunication and deadly misalliances . . . In “The Finder,” as in earlier thrillers like “Manhattan Nocturne” and “The Havana Room,” Mr. Harrison combines a Balzacian eye for social detail and a poet’s sense of mood with a sleazily sensationalistic plot . . . He succeeds in giving us 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 cerebral, satisfying, and thoroughly energetic thriller. As one would hope, The Finder never loses momentum, and it offers plenty in the way of fresh dis­illusionment, newfangled greed, and general cynicism for the reader to absorb. With real glee, the Harrison lifts the lid of our shared global economy and plunges us into the dark plumbing underneath.” —Bookforum,

“Harrison’s (The Havana Room) latest thriller opens with the explosive, rather disgusting murder of two seemingly unimportant Mexican illegals and, from there, pulls readers in on a ride they won’t want to end. Harrison manages to connect an assorted group of characters: an ex-fireman almost destroyed by 9/11, a brilliant Chinese woman on the run, a dying police officer working his last case, small-time mafiosi, and an aging multibillionaire who will do whatever it takes to keep his reputation intact . . . Add to the growing list of Harrison thrillers that cannot be put down; highly recommended.” — Library Journal (starred review)

“Lawless Chinese capitalists attack lawless American capitalists in a smooth thriller that includes a little sex, the mob and a load of sewage . . . Harrison (The Havana Room, 2004, etc.) keeps it all moving at a breakneck pace . . . Love, lust, money, treachery, death and violence, all in a nice tidy package.” —Kirkus Reviews

“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.” — Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“Think of Harrison’s latest thriller as evidence of the trickle-down effect of crime. In one of the ickiest opening scenes in the genre, two Mexican office cleaners are murdered when men lock them into a car and then pump raw sewage in through the sunroof, literally drowning them in shit. This is actually the second domino to fall in the chain reaction touched off by Jin Li, who uses a document-shredding and office-cleaning operation in New York as a front to funnel corporate secrets to her brother in Shanghai, who in turn uses them to exploit the market to dizzyingly profitable effect. When Jin Li goes missing, the brother immediately extorts her ex-boyfriend, a generally heroic sort, to find her and restore his highly sensitive operation. Harrison throws enough mobsters, crime lords, and insanely wealthy, unscrupulous old bastards to stamp NY all over this package . . . [An] engaging, well-paced saga of money and murder.” —Booklist

About the Author
Colin Harrison is the author of, most recently, The Havana Room (FSG, 2004). He lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Customer Reviews

Stock markets function on the quaint theory that they are effective
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?

Lost and Found
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.

Harrison's Best in Awhile
"The Finder" isn't quite as good as Harrison's earliest books, but it is better than the "Havana Room" and an engaging read from the beginning. The story focuses on a young Chinese immigrant, who actively participates in a web of intrigues that turn to murder. Instead of being a conventional "woman in jeopardy", she is a woman who is able to draw on strength, as well as resources from a recently fizzled relationship. The story revolves mostly around her, but also includes her thuggish, businessman brother and her former boyfriend, the strong, but wounded Ray, along with Ray's father, some shadowy mob-type characters, and latter day counterparts to the "Wall Street"/"Bonfire of the Vanities" crowd. The story is tied up a little too neatly with a few too many cliches (hence 4 stars, instead of 5). Still, it got me interested in going wherever Harrison goes next.