THE FINDER - Colin Harrison

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.  However, two of her employees die of suffocation when their car is hemmed in by trucks and filled with sewage. Realising that she was the intended victim, Jin Li goes into hiding. Chen is worried over her disappearance, 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.