The Finder

Opens with the graphic scene of women being drowned in sewerage poured into their car. But its not the big notes that count here (though they are excellent) it's the small subtle descriptions. The amount of care and life given to the 2 Mexican girls in the beginning, and then they die, shows how beautifully Harrison writes. This book works on all levels and the characterizations are excellent. The mystery is sufficiently engrossing, everyone has shades of gray, there is venality and evil but also just stupidity and greed. It's a very satisfying read. I'm running off to buy all his novels, this is a keeper and probably a reread as well.

Like well-crafted pieces of an intricate puzzle, Colin Harrison in The Finder first lays out a large cast of characters and then skillfully brings them all together for a tight fitting resolution. The story opens with a disturbing, but original, murder scene involving a large load of raw sewage and a small car. But it turns out the intended victim, Jin Li, who runs an office cleaning and document shredding business as a cover to send corporate secrets to her stock market finagling brother Chen in Shanghai, stepped away from the scene at the critical moment and is now running for her life. It turns out that some of this un-shredded information has negatively affected the stock of Good Pharma, causing venture capitalist Bill Martz to lose show more a large chunk of his billions, and he’s not too happy about it. Enter the mob in various unseemly underworld characters, an ex-cop on his deathbed, and his 9/11 firefighting son, Ray Grant and you’ve got the makings of a page-turning thriller. While Harrison occasionally gives us a bit more detail than seems necessary, his ability to describe the surroundings and create both heroic and nefarious characters propels the story to its satisfyingly brutal ending. show less

All you have to do to realize how differently each books affects each individual is to read reviews on Amazon and Goodreads. Clearly some books resonate for a whole variety of different reasons. This book is a good example of that.

Ray's relationship to his dying father is done, I think, in a very sensitive and emotional manner that resonated more than a few of my chords as I had gone through similar experiences with my father last fall. I suspect for many people, it would have been just boring. For me it was the opposite, if almost unreadable because it struck so close to home. Ray's farther is an ex-cop who wants desperately to help his son in the quest to locate his girlfriend. In the end he locates some key information in his old show more files.

Ray is an ex-fireman who was almost crushed with his partner (who did not survive) when the WTC collapsed. I must say that the description of Ray trying to stay alive while his partner dies is horrifying in the extreme and very realistic. I got claustrophobic while listening. One unusual method for murder is how the two Mexican immigrants are killed: their car is pumped full of sewage and they suffocate.

This is the third Colin Harrison I have read. This one is a tad different in that the protagonist is perhaps less ordinary - or should I say more extraordinary - than in the other two. On the other hand, his abilities are well within the range of normal considering his métier. Not quite as well done as the others, I think. The Peter Blake character seems superfluous; some of the character's motivations seem bizarre. Still an above average mystery/thriller. show less

Well written, cleverly plotted, fast paced crime thriller set in New York - keeps you turning the pages.

In THE FINDER Jin Li is a young, beautiful and very secretive Chinese
woman. Supposedly a supervisor for a company that cleans office
buildings in New York, she is actually an information thief who works
for her wealthy brother Chen's Shanghai-based company. Chen uses the
data she steals to make millions in the stock market. Good Pharma, a
company with some promising new products in the pipeline, discover
what Jin Li is up to and arrange for her to die. Jin Li escapes the
horrible killing as she is conveniently taking a toilet break nearby,
but two of her employees die of asphyxiation when their car is hemmed
in and filled with sewage. Realising that she was the intended victim,
Jin Li goes into hiding. Chen is worried over her disappearance, show more and
hires her ex-boyfriend Tom Reilly to find her after Tom convinces him
that he has nothing to do with her disappearance.

From here layer upon layer of plots are laid down. Twists and turns
abound with enough back stories to explain how the main players got to
where they are today. If you allow yourself the chance to stop and
think about the things you are reading, you will realise that reality
is stretched disbelievingly wide for a non-fantasy novel. But if you
can suspend belief, and not question what you are reading, it is a
fast paced adventure full of deliciously evil and wacky villains, who
make insider traders look like kindergarten kiddies. The ending is
odd – not what I would have expected at all after the remorseless
build up. I enjoyed reading THE FINDER, but there was something that
I couldn't quite put my finger on that stopped me from loving it. show less

The Finder is a thriller with a little bit of everything in it: information theft, illegal immigration, insider trading, the Mexican Mafia, big pharmacy, 9/11, Chinese manipulation of American markets...the list goes on. Harrison has written a very complex thriller with lots of little bits that get tied up fairly neatly in the end.

From the very disgusting death by sewage which opens the novel the action never lets up. A Brooklyn guy--owner of Victor's Victorious Sewarage--who is sorta kinda mobbed up has been contracted to "send a message" to an office cleaning company that may be involved in the theft of information that has sent Good Pharma's stock plummeting. The method he chooses to send his message? Kill--with a mountain of shit--a show more carful of workers, girls, guilty of nothing more--besides being in the country illegally--of working for CorpServe, the office cleaning company. Through sheer luck one of the girls, the boss, a beautiful Chinese immigrant named Jin Li escapes, and for the rest of the book she's on the run while pretty much everyone else looks for her.

Who's looking for Jin Li? Her brother and boss, Chen, based out of China running an operation that, in addition to its legal businesses around the world, makes insane amounts of money by using stolen insider information to manipulate European, Asian, and American stocks. Ray Grant, a former firefighter for the NYFD who went down on 9/11, has been out of the country as a freelance relief worker since his recovery, but has recently returned to New York to aid his dying father. And Vic, hauler of sewage, murderer, and wannabe gas station owner.

The action, while centered mainly in New York and Brooklyn, takes some interesting detours around the world as we learn of Ray Grant's and Jin Li's lives in flashback. There is also an excruciating sequence in the rubble of the World Trade Center on 9/11. show less

An edgy mix of corporate intrigue and urban gangster thriller is the crux of this novel. A Chinese immigrant running an illegal financial information business for shadowy figures in Shanghai has to go on the lam and her boyfriend, a ex New York City fireman must save her. Harrison occasionally mis-steps by laying on melodrama, with the main characters all dealing with personal issues, but his intricate descriptions of financial fraud schemes, and moments of action in the various boroughs of New York keep this story above water.