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| The Finder: A Novel | 
 enlarge | Author: Colin Harrison
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Category: Book
List Price: $25.00
Buy Used: $2.44
You Save: $22.56 (90%)
New (45) Used (38) Collectible (5) from $2.44
Avg. Customer Rating:  15 reviews
Sales Rank: 16598
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 336
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.9
Dimensions (in): 8.9 x 6.1 x 1.2
ISBN: 0374299498
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780374299491
ASIN: 0374299498
Publication Date: April 1, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
There’s no doubt about it: Colin Harrison is a master storyteller. Critics and readers love his gripping, dark books. It’s hard not to get sucked into his world. Entertainment Weekly calls him the “class act of the urban thriller,” Michiko Kakutani of The New York Times lauds him as “a master of mood and atmosphere,” and Publishers Weekly crows that Harrison writes “like an angel.” Now the author of The Havana Room, Afterburn, and Manhattan Nocturne raises the stakes with an electrifying new thriller, The Finder. Harrison spins the story of a young, beautiful, secretive Chinese woman, Jin-Li, who gets involved in a brilliant scheme to steal valuable information from corporations in New York City. When the plan is discovered by powerful New Yorkers who stand to lose enormous sums of money, Jin-Li goes on the run. Meanwhile, her former lover, Ray Grant, a man who was out of the country for years but has recently returned, is caught up in the search for her. Ray has not been forthcoming to Jin-Li about why he left New York or what he was doing overseas, but his training and strengths will be put to the ultimate test against those who are unmerciful in their desire to regain a fortune lost. Ray is going to have to find Jin-Li, and he is going to have to find her fast.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 10 more reviews...
Stock markets function on the quaint theory that they are effective July 12, 2008
25 out of 30 found this review helpful
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?
 average at best April 6, 2008
10 out of 15 found this review helpful
read raving rave reviews in the new york times and entertainment weekly and usually they are very reliable but this is just an average thriller written in a workmanlike style. nothing special here really, just a passable time killing read but with all the raves i was really expecting much, much more. some glaring goofs too. you fill an older model car with sewage to the top, when the fluid comes out the radio is just not going to keep playing. Plenty of little goofs like this through the narrative that may be minor but kind of take you out of the story like little reminders that this is really not based in any kind of reality. it's just average, barely average really.
 Superb urban noir crime story April 16, 2008
9 out of 10 found this review helpful
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
excellent crime thriller April 2, 2008
8 out of 19 found this review helpful
In New York City, someone is using insider information to make a financial killing buying and selling Good Pharma stock. An outraged billionaire warns CEO Tom Reilly to plug the leak and to take care of the culprit regardless of means or else. His paper notes delivered to Reilly even in Yankee Stadium frightens the CEO who must do something or face dire consequences from an unknown but obviously powerful stockholder.
Tom is unable at first to figure out who or how. Using a legitimate paper shredding outfit CorpServe as a guise, Jin Li has been selling company information that she provides to her brother Chen who trades stocks accordingly. A desperate Tom orders a ruthless wannabe to take care of the leak. In Brooklyn two twentyish female Mexican employees working for the shredding firm are murdered, but Li escapes not before she sees their horrific deaths. Her sibling and Reilly assume her former boyfriend Ray Grant not only helped her, he hid her probably in Brooklyn. Each side demands he reveals where she is. He has no idea but turns to his dying father, a former NYPD cop, to help him find Jin before he becomes an afterlife greeter welcoming his father.
This is an excellent crime thriller that grips readers as every trail converges on Li even an overseas stock market. The story line is fast-paced from the moment the two young Mexicans are killed in Brooklyn and never slows down as Tom, Chen and Ray understand the threats to their lives while each seek Li as the key to their safety. Fans of urban crime capers will appreciate this exhilarating action-packed thriller that never decelerates ending with a typhoon.
Harriet Klausner
Ok, if you don't mind excrement! April 8, 2008
7 out of 18 found this review helpful
My first Colin Harrison, but I'll probably give him another opportunity. This is an acceptable mystery read if you don't mind 2 heavy characteristics of the writing: (1) 2 Mexican girls killed by being drowned in excrement dumped into their car with extensive description and the hero making his way through sewage of NYC in search of clues (the author needs therapy for his exhibited anality! (2) extensive expositions of back stories of almost every character are highly digressive and interrupt the story for pages.
Interesting enough that I'll try another by this author and hope he does so much evacuating!
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