A Dose of Reality Thriller

House on Fire - Joseph Finder -(Dutton)

There is an almost perfect parallel to reality, ripped from today’s headlines feel to Joseph Finder’s latest installment in the Nick Heller series, House on Fire. Like many of the prior Heller novels this one has Heller on one case at the start and a very different case as things progress and in this case it becomes a very personal one on a couple of different fronts.

Heller meets one of the daughters of the founder of a multi-billion dollar pharmaceutical company as he helps to bury a friend from his days in the military special forces due to the friend’s long running addiction to opioid painkillers. The daughter makes a habit of attending the funerals of those she believes are victims of her family’s best selling medication, the oddly familiar, Oxydone. The daughter ends up engaging Heller’s services to try to track down a long rumored, but hidden study that outlined the drugs highly addictive properties.

The search takes Heller to the family estate for a birthday party for the company founder and family patriarch, under the subterfuge that he is the daughter’s new beau. At the party he encounters another person, a girlfriend from his past and his time in the military, who is also undercover and in the employ of another family member, on the hunt for another set of documents. The pair partner to track down the the paperwork and after ducking and dodging their way out of a hairy situation, Heller’s partner in crime, is found dead of the estate.

That’s when things get really personal and Heller loses his client, but starts the hunt not only for a killer, but for revenge for his late, drug addicted friend and his family. Before embarking on the Heller series, Finder really made his bones as a bestselling author, by writing corporate based thrillers and with House on Fire he returns to the best traditions of those high intrigue, pressure cooker thrills. He is a master of drawing multi-dimensional characters and weaving in returning players,like Heller’s Bernie Madoff-like, convict father who ratchet up the action with their own set of motivations.

The Kimball klan bares a striking resemblance to the real-life Stackler family behind the Purdue Pharmaceutical corporation, manufacturers of OxyContin and those most often blamed for the very real world opioid addiction problem, which just add the dose of reality to this storyline.

Judgment Day for Judgment

Judgment: A Novel – Joseph Finder (Dutton)

Joseph Finder is one of my all-time favorite authors. He has done an amazing job of crafting tightly woven plots, compelling characters and stories that will suck you in and keep you turning pages and guessing right to the very end. Add to that his willingness to kill off a main character along the way just to ratchet things up.

With his new book, Judgment, I am left questioning Finder’s judgement. First, there are the totally out of place, backhanded slaps at Donald Trump, ranging from a dog chewing on a Trump figurine chew toy (?) to a running commentary on branches  of the U.S. government that deal with all things Russia, are underfunded/understaffed. Not sure how these offhand remarks (Russia collusion?) served moving the story along?

Plot Holes

Couple that silliness with plot holes throughout and storylines that swerve off the road and go nowhere and you’ll be left scratching your head. You have to wonder how it is that the seemingly all knowing, all seeing antagonist somehow misses when the protagonist, Judge Julianna Brody has a series of meetings with representatives of the federal government.

The ending was a dramatic miss, where Brody gets to walk straight into a high powered meeting at the private residence of a Russian oligarch so she can confront her tormentor directly. Now this is a guy who has been portrayed as being so ruthless, or surrounded by ruthless killers who would not hesitate to kill off anyone who gets in the way; yet she gets to walk out of the house unscathed. In fact there were so many opportunities that Judge Brody could have been dispatched that it defies logic and any grip on reality.

It was my respect for Finder’s skill that kept me plugging along, reading to the end, in an unrealized hope that things would take a turn for the better, that never happened.

Summer Reads Make Me Feels Fine…Part 2

Black Widow – Daniel Silva (Harper)

As a writer, I hate Daniel Silva. As a reader, I think Daniel Silva is among one of the masters. This is not a coincidence; I am of the belief that Daniel Silva is one of those true skillful wordsmiths who make the art of storytelling look easy as he weaves familiar characters and locales into a storyline that appears to be ripped from the headlines.

Just knowing the timeline for publishing a book, I know that is not case; that somehow Silva has divined from the world the potential for events to happen that later materialized. At work on the manuscript for his latest book, Black Widow when events occurred in France, he pondered scrapping the work because it cut too close to reality. It is that rare skill of taking raw elements of the world around them and honing them into a story that separates the artisans from the pretenders.

Gabriel Allon, Silva’s master art restorer, assassin and spy is back to battle the forces of ISIS, armed with his cadre of usual suspects and a mysterious newcomer he injects into the fray. Thought provoking and with just the right amount of tension to keep things moving along at a powerful clip, Black Widow will keep you guessing until the end. Great read.

Guilty Minds – Joseph Finder – (Dutton)

The third installment in the Nick Heller series, Guilty Minds, finds Heller, the private spy for hire, tasked with trying to unravel an assault on the reputation of the chief justice of the Supreme Court by a low life website dubbed The Scandal Sheet. Heller has just 48 hours before the story goes live and the clock is ticking.

Utilizing cunning and high tech skills, Heller makes quick work of debunking the story, toppling the website and the reporter. But was it all too quick? With shady characters around every corner and mysterious, high stakes powerbrokers around every corner and the high class call girl at the center of the story ending up dead, Heller knows their more to the story than he’s uncovered so far.

As always, Finder shows a word magician’s deft, sleight of hand to keep your focus off the prize. Add to that the fact that nothing in Washington, DC is ever what is really seems and you’ve got the makings of a tasty thrill ride.

Panacea – F Paul Wilson (Tor Books)

In his first outing since wrapping the Repairman Jack series with 2014’s Fear City veteran novelist F Paul Wilson brews up Panacea, which is a fine cocktail of one part medical thriller, mixed with three parts shadowy characters, a dash of good old fashioned murder and a shaker of religious fanaticism, just to keep things interesting.

Is there an ultimate cure for what ails you? Does this panacea exist? A terminally ill hires medical examiner Laura fanning to investigate and track down the miracle cure. The high stakes race is on, but Fanning is not just playing beat the clock, she finds herself thrusts into a life and death struggle with two secret societies that are battling for control of this secret.

Wilson serves up his classic mix of high octane thrills, fully developed, likable characters and a break neck pacing that will keep you spinning. After churning out a shelf full of great books, Wilson proves he’s still got it.    

When You Least Expect It…

The Fixer – Joseph Finder – (Dutton)

It is a classic writing jump starter; you find something in an unexpected place, use it to drive your story. For an added twist let’s throw into the mix the question that numerous children have raised during their lifetimes; how well do you really know your parents?

Those are the building blocks, the foundation of Joseph Finder’s latest thriller, The Fixer. At frayed ends having recently lost a high paying, high profile job as a writer at a Boston glossy, Rick Hoffman finds himself living in his childhood home, a dilapidated, moldering stack of bricks in need of a facelift. With his Dad wasting away in a nursing home, silenced by a stroke nearly two decades past, Hoffman is struggling to get by when a childhood neighbor finds him living in his Dad’s digs.

 

The neighbor helps him to determine the source of a foul order and after breaking through some ragged plaster, Hoffman finds some neatly packed stacks of hundreds and fifties. A quick count has the mystery find totaling out at $3.4 million and sets Hoffman on a path to discover the source of the largess.

It turns out the Hoffman never really did know his Dad; in fact he is surprised to learn the Leonard Hoffman built his legal career working as a fixer, the go to guy when it came to a mysterious “cash bank” and a guy who could get things taken care of.

As Hoffman peels back the layers in attempt to determine the not only the source of the money, but the story behind it, he encounters a steady stream of shady and dangerous characters. This is Classic Joseph Finder, just when you think you’ve a got a handle on things hold on tight for a high speed shift of gears and a new twist in the road. Finder is the master of dropping his lead characters into one precarious situation after another.

Summer Reading Stampede…Part 3

The annual stampede of great summer reading is upon us; here is round three of my look at what to expect from both the tried and true veterans of the form to up and some up and coming new talents.

Suspicion – Joseph Finder (Dutton Books)

I love thrillers, there is just something exciting about being on that twisting turning rollercoaster that keeps me coming back for more. When you boil it down, one of the things that puts the thrill in thrillers is the writer’s ability to create tension in the story; the ability to pull that rubber band taught, almost to the snapping point. Simply put; no one does tension better than Joseph Finder.

Finder’s latest, Suspicion, finds struggling writer Danny Goodman caught squarely between a rock and a hard place; he needs a quick infusion of cash or this single father will need to tear apart his daughter’s life and remove her from a pricey private school. When a new school friend’s well to do father offers a life line in the form of no strings attached loan, how could Goodman resist?

When it turns out the loan came from a suspected money launderer for the brutal Sinaloa drug cartel, the DEA comes knocking on Goodman’s door waving around fraud charges and an “opportunity” the story is off to the races. Finder does a masterful job with the classic fish out of water storyline; what would a struggling biographer know about drug cartels and being law enforcement snitch? Goodman reacts like any father and does what he can to protect his family and himself and therein lays the tension in the story.

Rogue Code – A Jeff Aiken Novel – Mark Russinovich (Thomas Dunne Books)

Mark Russinovich is a senior tech guru for Microsoft and the author of numerous technical writings, who in his spare time has managed to knock out a series of high tech thrillers featuring computer security expert Jeff Aiken. The third book in the series, Rogue Code tackles the all too realistic threat that the New York Stock Exchange could be hacked and accounts plundered to the tune of millions and millions of dollars.

Aiken is called in to investigate a potential security at the NYSE, only to discover not only that they have been hacked, but it appears someone has left the proverbial door open. From there the race is on to not only get himself out from trumped up charges, but to put a stop to what could become a multi-billion dollar theft.

Often cited by those in the know for his tech accuracy, Russinovich may lose some readers with the sheer volume of not only technical jargon, but of the description of what is happening in a given scene. At times the book screams for a shot of additional dialog, but overall still delivers the goods.

Wolf – A Jack Caffery Thriller – Mo Hayder - (Atlantic Monthly Press)

Best-selling author Mo Hayder serves up the 7^th installment of the Detective Jack Caffrey series, Wolf. This being my first venture into the mind of Ms. Hayder, I didn’t know quite what to expect. What I got was the desire to go back and flesh out some of the depth that is clearly part and parcel of the Caffery character; simply put there is a whole lot more to this guy then can be found in just one book.

 

Some may chafe at some of the more vicious twists and scenes that Hayder weaves into this tale of a home invasion that is also more than meets the eye, but I think she uses the device well to set the hook for the “final” twist. This is one that has kept me thinking and shivering well after I closed the back cover.