Features
- Cover Type: Hard Cover with 336 pages
- Published by: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
- Edition: 1st Edition April 1, 2008
- Written in: English
- ISBN 10 Number: 0374299498
- ISBN 13 Number: 978-0374299491
-
Book Dimensions:
8.9 x 6.1 x 1.2 inches
- Weighs: 14.4 ounces
Reader Reviews
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?
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