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The best thrillers begin with normal people in believable situations and then lead us seamlessly into territory where their lives are disrupted in ways that are out of the ordinary. Such is the case with Joseph Finder's latest thriller THE FIXER. Down on his luck, investigative journalist Rick Hoffman returns to the house he grew up in because he has no place else to go. He has lost his job and has no resources. The house is in terrible disrepair, since no one has been living there. His father, once a powerful lawyer, has been in a nursing home for two decades after having suffered a stroke. Hoffman basically camps out in the dust-covered, dilapidated rooms.
Then his next-door neighbor Jeff, a contractor, offers to renovate the house for a share of its selling price. As Rick and Jeff walk through the house to inspect it, they open up a wall in the back of a closet and Rick sees something odd in the dim interior. The space appears to hold stacks of money. He tries to hide what he has seen from Jeff, but he is not sure if he is successful.
Using all his skills, Rick begins a hunt to figure out where the money, three million dollars, came from. He mentions it to his father Lenny, even though the older man has lost the ability to communicate. Rick gets an unexpectedly strong reaction when he brings up the subject and his father grows agitated, blinking rapidly. Little by little, Rick discovers who his father had been and what he had done. But it seems that his quest is being monitored. Rick is followed by powerful entities as he searches, and it seems that someone does not want him to discover the truth. He is kidnapped and beaten. This does not deter him. He continues to uncover information and links that soon connect his father and associates with Boston's Big Dig, the historic fiasco of a road project that lasted so long and cost so much it became a running joke before it was eventually finished. The money he found may have been part of what was called a "cash bank," a laundering scheme also linked to bribery.
Rick becomes involved with a beautiful woman from his past, but he acts stupidly on their date, throwing around his newly acquired cash. As we admire Rick's fortitude and investigative skills, we also wonder at his reckless behavior. He puts himself in danger more than once, and is beaten severely. The fact that he recovers so quickly is problematic but possible. We enjoy watching the process by which Rick finds the clues and puts together the reasons that events in the past played out as they did. The slow unraveling of the origins of the mysterious as well as the unfolding story of Lenny Hoffman and what happened to him so many years ago infuses THE FIXER with non-stop suspense.
§ Anne Corey is a writer, poet, teacher and botanical artist in New York's Hudson Valley.
Reviewed by Anne Corey, June 2015
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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
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