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.

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Judgment by Joseph Finder

Published by Dutton on January 29, 2019

Judge Juliana Brody cheats on her husband at a legal conference with a fellow named Matias Sanchez. They agree it will be a one-night fling. Back in Boston, Brody is presiding over a sexual harassment case that a woman brought against a ride-sharing company. On her first day back in court, a new lawyer is added to the company’s defense team. Yes, it’s Sanchez, who wants rulings in the harassment case to favor the defendant and threatens publication of salacious videos if the judge doesn’t cooperate. In particular, the defense wants her to dismiss the case so it doesn’t need to disclose a damaging document.

The premise is thin. Rather than blackmailing the judge, the corporation could easily follow the standard corporate procedure of pretending the document doesn’t exist. Or it could give the former employee an apology, an admission of wrongdoing, and a ton of money to settle the case to keep the document from coming to light. The availability of less risky options makes the blackmail threat seems awfully contrived.

Brody’s husband is a law professor who may or may not have dallied with one of his students a few years earlier, but Brody doesn’t want to reveal her indiscretion and potentially ruin her marriage. She’s even more concerned about damaging her career, which seems destined to land her on a higher court. Sex tapes may not bother post-Trump politicians, but judges tend to be stuffy about public disclosures of their private shenanigans, particularly when they shenanigan with a lawyer who is appearing before the judge.

Another judge refers Brody to a private investigator who helps her smoke out the blackmailer. In the tradition of conspiracy thrillers, Brody and the investigator peel back layers and discover that the conspiracy is vast. The novel then moves in the customary direction of conspiracy thrillers, with sinister figures appearing every now and then to threaten Brody and thwart her attempts to unmask the conspirator, sometimes by committing or attempting murder. As usual, conspirators or their sympathizers seem to have infiltrated various corners of government, leaving Brody uncertain whether there is anyone left in the world she can trust.

Apart from the contrived premise, Joseph Finder wields the formula capably. Unfortunately, I found it hard to care much about Brody. She made her bed and decided not to lie on it or to own her mistakes. Her desire to fight back against the blackmail is understandable, but her utter contempt for the law in her approach to saving her career is not. I appreciate that Finder has another character saying to Brody “Do you really think the law is for other people?” A good many people in power think exactly that, and Brody’s willingness to put her career above her principles is less than endearing.

The novel is timely in its focus on Russians who are able to influence American policy. It is pointed in its criticism of the government’s sudden lack of interest in enforcing sanctions against Russian entities. The story imagines that Putin uses strawmen to own a bunch of businesses around the world, which doesn’t take much imagination. Finder’s niche in the thriller market is the world of finance, and his knowledge of financial misconduct adds credibility to the plot, even if the blackmail scheme didn’t strike me as being credible at all.

The story doesn’t create much tension and its resolution is much too easy. But the novel worked for me because, while I didn’t care much about Brody, I cared a great deal about her son, a cancer survivor who rebels against his mother’s rigidity, and her husband, whose is better than his wife at prioritizing things that are truly important. Breaking the rules at least gives Brody a chance to think about whether living a perfect life and pursuing a perfect career track is really as important as she has always believed, although I’m not sure she actually internalizes the lesson. Judgment is a flawed thriller but it has sufficient entertainment value to warrant a lukewarm recommendation.

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The Switch by Joseph Finder

Published by Dutton on June 13, 2017

The Switch is a fairly typical conspiracy novel, the kind where people do bad things to keep secrets a secret, either in the name of national security or job security. The plot follows the Hitchcock/Ludlum formula: Ordinary guy who stumbles upon a secret relies on resourcefulness and luck to stay a step ahead of the evil forces that want to capture or kill him. The evil forces our hero must elude include the NSA, a Senate staffer, private enforcers, the mob, and a Russian spy. The formula is reliable and Joseph Finder is a good storyteller who creates believable characters, but he can’t disguise the story’s familiarity.

Michael Tanner runs a company that distributes high-end coffee. His business is in trouble and his girlfriend left him. One his way home to Boston from an LA sales meeting, he inadvertently picks up the wrong laptop while going through airport security. The laptop belongs to a senator. Its contents, easily accessed via the password she wrote on a post-it affixed to the laptop, would be disastrous for the senator if they were made public. After all, she’s not supposed to have classified information on her personal laptop. The classified information is disastrous for the public, since it describes one of those ubiquitous government programs that lets the NSA spy on innocent Americans.

Tanner is searching the laptop for information about its owner when he finds top secret documents about the NSA project. He naturally discusses the information with a reporter who warns him that his life is in danger. Meanwhile, Will Abbott, the senator’s staffer, contacts various outside forces in an attempt to get the laptop back before taking the matter into his own hands. The NSA promptly learns that Tanner has the classified information, but doesn’t know how it got leaked. Will is therefore racing against the NSA to see who can recover the laptop first.

Some of The Switch is predictable, including the lecture about how we’ve sacrificed our privacy for convenience. True enough, but a common thriller theme. And yes, we live in a police state, at least when the police claim they are enforcing laws related to national security, and yes, we live in a post-truth era, but those lectures only have educational value for readers who live with their heads buried in the sand. Much of the rest of the story is also standard thriller fare, as Tanner tries to stay ahead of the various parties who want the information on the Senator’s laptop.

I give credit to Finder for resisting the urge to go over the top. The story seems plausible because Tanner never does anything that requires the skills of Jason Bourne. He doesn’t want to be a hero; he just wants to survive. He’s a believable character, as is Will, the other character who benefits from significant personality development. I'm not sure the ending is entirely plausible (in the real world, ordinary people who get caught passing classified information to reporters go to prison) but happy endings are also standard fare in conspiracy thrillers.

I like the coffee business angle to the story (financial thrillers are really Finder’s strength), but that’s a small component of a novel that doesn’t impart a new twist to an old plot. I can recommend The Switch because it moves quickly and it always held my interest, but I would have given it a stronger recommendation if Finder had found a way to surprise me.

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Guilty Minds by Joseph Finder

Published by Dutton on July 19, 2016

Nick Heller is a private intelligence operative. A prominent insider lawyer contacts him because a story is scheduled to run on a gossip website that accuses the Chief Justice of maintaining a relationship with a prostitute. Even worse, the relationship was paid for by a casino owner who had a case before the Supreme Court. Heller’s job is to prove that the accusations are false.

The most interesting aspect of Guilty Minds, I think, is its discussion of gossip-mongering websites like TMZ and The Drudge Report and Perez Hilton that often operate like the modern version of yellow journalism. While much of the reported content isn’t political (in fact, most people find movie star gossip more interesting than smears of a senator whose name they don’t recognize), gossip mongers are easily manipulated for the sake of headlines (or internet rankings) in ways that serve political purposes. Of course, some (like Drudge) are overtly political and prefer muckraking to anything resembling journalism.

Somewhere in the middle of the novel, Heller is able to do something to help the Chief Justice, but the story is only beginning at that point. The rest of the novel ramps up the action as Heller tracks down the bigger mystery of why he was asked to solve the problem.

Action scenes keep the story moving in the second half. They are all reasonably credible, except for a “rescue” scene near the end, where Heller has a surprisingly easy time. That’s better, in my view, than the ridiculous thriller scenes in which one heroic guy manages to take out fifty security professionals in order to pull off a daring rescue.

Characters are not deep but they are sufficiently developed to make them interesting. Joseph Finder always writes prose that flows smoothly. Guilty Minds doesn’t have the intrigue of his best novels, but it’s a fun summer read. (Never mind that I read it in February -- it is always summer on Tzer Island.)

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Suspicion by Joseph Finder

Published by Dutton on May 27, 2014

Dan Goodman is a blocked writer who long ago spent the advance on a new book that has just been cancelled. A step away from financial ruin, Goodman can't pay his daughter's private school tuition, much less the cost of the class trip to Italy. His divorced wife (Abby's mother) died from cancer, Abby's step-father has no interest in her, and Goodman feels too guilty to deny Abby the only thing in months that has made her smile. When Tom Galvin, the wealthy father of Abby's new friend, offers to front the cost of the trip, Goodman grudgingly accepts. Later, he accepts a loan from Galvin to keep Abby in school. Soon after that, Goodman is told that he is a suspect in a federal drug investigation. He has accepted money from Galvin who (Goodman is told) is suspected by the DEA of managing money for a Mexican drug cartel. Goodman protests his innocence, but his pleas are meet with threats to lock him up for 30 years if he does not cooperate by getting the goods on Galvin.

A number of plot twists ensue after the premise is established. The twists are not entirely unexpected, which is a bit disappointing, but they are well executed. Unlike so many modern thriller writers, Joseph Finder tells a plausible story. Galvin and Goodman are both likable characters. Finder manages to make the reader root for both of them, even though they are often at odds and despite Goodman's less than admirable employment. If you're looking or villains to dislike, Finder provides plenty of ruthless characters to fill that role. One of them (the "angel of death") is a stereotype of sinister villains, although Finder does make an effort to make him an interesting killer.

Suspicion incorporates the usual tricks of suspense creation. Spying on Galvin, Goodman nearly gets caught, each time creating a new reason for Galvin to suspect him. The tricks are too predictable but, again, they are capably executed. Finder writes in a "reader friendly" style, using short chapters and maintaining a brisk pace. The resolution is a little too tidy but it is nonetheless satisfying. Finder knows his craft, and while Suspicion is simpler and less surprising than the thrillers upon which his reputation is based, it is enjoyable in many ways.

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