House on Fire by Joseph Finder

Published by Dutton on January 21, 2020

House on Fire imagines a pharmaceutical company that bears a close resemblance to Perdue Pharma. The family that controls it bears a close resemblance to the Sackler family. The company manufactures a drug called Oxydone, a drug that bears a close resemblance to OxyContin, except it is delivered through an inhaler. Like the Sacklers, the Kimball family promoted the drug aggressively to doctors, assuring them that the potential for patient addiction was low, and in the process made a fortune while creating a public health crisis. The Kimballs, like the Sacklers, have also squirreled money away in a variety of shell companies so that the family fortune will remain intact when their company inevitably goes bankrupt to avoid liability for all the lawsuits the family’s nefarious scheme has spawned.

In his Acknowledgements, Joseph Finder says the Kimball family isn’t based on any real-life family. Har har har. Okay, Finder and his publisher don’t want to be sued, so you can’t blame him for saying that. You’d also have to be blind to ignore the obvious parallels between the Sacklers and the Kimballs.

Putting aside the background, the plot departs (presumably) from reality; this is fiction, after all. It is difficult to prosecute families for the crimes committed by the corporations they control, but Conrad Kimball not only buried a study that revealed the addictive properties of Oxydone (the corporate crime of defrauding the government), he orchestrated some murders to keep the truth hidden (the very personal crime of homicide). It is up to Finder’s hero, Nick Heller, to expose Conrad’s evil deeds. Initially, he is hired by Conrad’s daughter Susan to locate a copy of the study. A friend of his, Maggie Benson, tells Nick she has been hired by a different daughter to find Conrad’s estate plan. Nick and Maggie both discover that it is dangerous to snoop into the business of a ruthless family. The novel’s second half is largely devoted to Nick’s exploits as he fights, jumps, shoots, rappels, and otherwise proves himself to be an action hero in his quest to bring Conrad to justice.

Finder’s specialty is corporate and financial crime. Given its prevalence, his novels are usually timely. This one offers reasonable insights into wealth crime: profiting from human weakness “is the greatest business opportunity there ever was”; the wealthy view bankruptcies as sinful when poor people use them to avoid debt but as a legitimate business tool for corporations that want to jettison the consequences of poor decisions; wealthy families market themselves by giving money to museums and hospitals and universities, where their names will be etched in stone, washing the filth from the money they made.

Heller is an interesting character. His father is in prison, a successful white-collar criminal until he got caught. Heller’s friendship with Maggie was derailed seven years earlier because he tried to seek justice for a military rape that Maggie endured, never thinking about whether Maggie would approve of his actions. With that background, Heller engages in more self-reflection than is typical of a thriller hero.

On the other hand, life might be a bit too easy for Heller. He outshoots multiple armed opponents and despite bringing his fists to a knife fight, dispatches his adversary with relative ease. Things need to go Heller’s way to keep the plot moving, so a password is guessed, a door is conveniently left unlocked, a desk clerk hands over a room key without checking ID, and a character confesses at the end when silence would be a more prudent option. Still, credibility issues are common in modern thrillers, and the ending features a surprise or two. While the novel’s action tends to overshadow its suspense, Finder knows how to hold a thriller fan’s attention. If for no other reason, the novel is fun because corporate outlaws face the kind of justice that only happens in fiction.

RECOMMENDED