THE FIXER

A struggling writer finds $3.4 million in cash in a crawl space in his old house, leading him to discover the truth about his stroke-ridden father.

Since Rick Hoffman lost his lucrative job with a slick city magazine, things have gotten so bad that he's camping out in his family's disheveled, heat-deprived home in Cambridge. His father, Leonard, a former lawyer, is in a nursing home, unable to speak or communicate. An ace investigative reporter for the Boston Globe before he was hired by the Back Bay to write about rich people, Rick begins nosing around to find out where the money came from. In no time at all, he suffers his first beating from bad guys who warn him to back off. Living large, he hides out in hotel rooms while investigating his father's past. Leonard, it turns out, is a man of many secrets. He was a bagman for strip clubs and porn clubs. He was also an activist pro bono lawyer for civil liberties causes. Digging through city records and interviewing former connections of his father's, Rick uncovers a coverup of major proportions—and more surprises. As in his previous novel, Suspicion (2014), Finder gives us a character who acts stupidly to pull himself out of bad circumstances. But neither the lack of credibility nor Rick's thinness as a character keeps the book from being a fun read.

Finder returns with another thriller that will have you shaking your head over the protagonist's actions but still turning the pages to find out what happens next.