The Switch

April 17, 2017
At the start of Thriller Award–winner Finder’s enjoyable standalone, Michael Tanner, the owner of Tanner Roast, a specialty coffee company in Boston, mistakenly picks up the laptop belonging to U.S. Senator Susan Robbins of Illinois after going through security at Los Angeles International airport. Predictably, the laptop contains highly classified files about a secret surveillance plan being considered by the NSA. A friend who’s an investigative reporter, Lanny Roth, persuades Tanner to reveal what’s on the laptop and to hang on to it until he, Lanny, can work out a deal with the NSA. Meanwhile, it falls to Will Abbott, Robbins’s chief of staff, to recover the computer before it becomes public knowledge that a U.S. senator not only had classified material on her laptop but that she was careless enough to lose it. Though readers hung up on realism will just have to accept some unlikely elements (such as a coffee roaster as NSA adversary), Finder (The Fixer) once again shows his knack for crafting an engaging thriller. Agent: Dan Conaway, Writers House.

May 1, 2017
Boston coffee executive Michael Tanner's life is in jeopardy after he takes home the wrong laptop from the airport--one belonging to an Illinois senator containing highly classified files.The illegally uploaded files contain information about a scary government surveillance program. Fearful that the documents will be made public, torpedoing her presidential hopes, Sen. Susan Robbins assigns her overeager chief of staff, Will Abbott, to retrieve the computer. When all else fails, he resorts to hiring private operatives. Tanner discovers how desperate his situation is when a newspaper writer to whom he has shown the secret files is killed, in what is staged as a suicide. On the run, running low on cash and places to hide, Tanner is targeted not only by Abbott's hires, but also by thugs working for the National Security Agency, which deactivates all his online accounts. "Privacy?" utters one character. "Get over it. No such thing anymore." Seemingly ripped from recent headlines, Finder's latest is one of his most fiendishly plotted and eerily relevant thrillers. It involves careless security breaches by government officials, Russian spies, Edward Snowden parallels, and even an exchange of secrets in a Sensitive Compartmentalized Information Facility like the one recently utilized by Devin Nunes, Republican chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. Finder (Guilty Minds, 2016, etc.) isn't one to waste time considering the moral implications of such quickly forgotten acts as Tanner mowing down a pursuer with his car. And he fudges plot details: wouldn't the bad guys surveil Tanner's wife and let her lead them to him? But the book whizzes by so quickly and suspensefully, why dwell on such imperfections? A master of what might be called the "man in over his head" thriller, Finder delivers a tense, uncannily relevant tale about government secrets falling into the wrong hands.

COPYRIGHT(2017) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Starred review from June 1, 2017
Finder is a master at placing ordinary people into extraordinary circumstances that call upon them, first, to figure out what's going on, and then to use all their mental and physical capacities to survive it. Michael Tanner is an ordinary man; he runs a gourmet-coffee business out of Boston. Returning from a business trip to L.A., Tanner picks up the wrong laptop from the gray security tray. Meanwhile, U.S. Senator Susan Robbins returns to D.C. with Tanner's laptop and the realization that her career and U.S security may both be in jeopardy if the highly sensitive contents of her machine ever leak out. She calls upon her chief of staff, Will Abbott, to retrieve it. The nexus of the escalating conflict between Tanner and Abbott is this: Tanner suspects that once he's given back the computer, he himself may be killed as insurance against the secrets getting out. Finder shuttles between the points of view of Tanner and Abbott, both equally desperate; every move by one of the two creates more tension in the other, giving the ingenious plot sort of a Chinese-finger-puzzle feel. Great characterization, heart-stopping chase scenes, a plot that never flagsand even a few fascinating facts about coffee sourcing. Finder may well be the best contemporary thriller writer going.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)

February 1, 2017

The MacBook that Michael Tanner picked up accidentally at the TSA security line at LAX belongs to Sen. Susan Robbins, and it contains top secret files that have been uploaded illegally. Does he agree to return it? No, he does not, and that's where things get sticky.

Copyright 2017 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

June 1, 2017

A crowded airport security line has Michael Tanner, CEO of a gourmet coffee company, making a quick mistake. He accidentally picks up another laptop instead of his own, and when he gets home he realizes his error. The owner of the computer now in his possession is a U.S. senator, and what Michael sees on the device is not only top secret but also potentially illegal. The folks who work for the senator have figured out that Michael has their boss's laptop, and they will do anything to get it back. There are a couple of moments in which Michael seemingly has the opportunity to end the danger by giving back the laptop, but he elects to keep it. His reasoning is baffling at first, but it ends up making complete sense by the end. VERDICT Finder (Guilty Minds; The Fixer) has written another compelling thriller that demonstrates his strengths of mixing corporate themes with mayhem. This one is bound to be another best seller as the perfect summer read. [See Prepub Alert, 1/8/17.]--Jeff Ayers, Seattle P.L.

Copyright 2017 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

July 31, 2017
Late for his flight home to Boston, Finder’s protagonist Michael Tanner grabs what he thinks is his laptop, realizing later that it belongs to U.S. Sen. Susan Robbins. The senator is silly enough to stick a Post-it with the computer’s password to its case, allowing Tanner to access top-secret files about a very nasty government program. A friend of Tanner’s convinces him to hang on to the laptop and reveal its contents, causing the senator’s chief of staff, Will Abbott, to engage fixers to hunt Tanner down. Soon, he is on the run, not only from Abbott and his goons but also from a wily Russian named Gregory and Earle Laffoon, an NSA agent. Narrator Kearney brings energy and a fast pacing to the production, taking the plot swiftly past a few credibility potholes to get to the heart of the book, the fever-paced chase. Kearney makes character identification easy. Tanner sounds like an honorable guy, trying to decide what the right thing to do is now that he knows the contents of the computer. Kearns follows Finder’s description of Gregory’s “barely detectable accent” precisely and slightly modifies Laffoon’s “deep-southern accent” to a mild drawl that sounds sternly authoritative. Kearney’s best portrayal, of Abbott, the novel’s most complex character, is all faux efficiency around the senator, filled with self-doubt and guilt when with his wife and baby boy, and dangerously angry when on Tanner’s trail. A Dutton hardcover.