Publisher's Weekly Review
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. (June) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Kirkus Review
Boston coffee executive Michael Tanner's life is in jeopardy after he takes home the wrong laptop from the airportone 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 Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
*Starred Review* 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 flags and even a few fascinating facts about coffee sourcing. Finder may well be the best contemporary thriller writer going.--Fletcher, Connie Copyright 2017 Booklist
Library Journal Review
Two people arriving at Boston's Logan Airport from a Los Angeles flight have accidentally switched laptops. One is Michael Tanner, who runs a Boston-based coffee distribution company. The other is U.S. Senator Susan Robbins. Experienced readers could almost write the plot from this point onward: the senator's computer contains highly classified materials and she sets into motion a series of actions that lead to an expected conclusion. Reader Steven Kearney does little to breathe excitement into Finder's somewhat turgid prose and the only halfway interesting character is a Foghorn Leghorn-esque NSA agent determined to reclaim the laptop with or without Tanner's (or Robbins's Senate aide's) cooperation. The action, such as it is, seems overly complex and if it were not for the reputation of Finder, this would not be a necessary purchase. Verdict Highly optional. ["The perfect summer read": LJ 6/1/17 review of the Dutton hc.]-Joseph L. Carlson, Vandenberg Air Force Base, CA © Copyright 2017. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.