Best-selling Boston author Joseph Finder is a master of Russian intrigue, which is vividly depicted in his new thriller “The Oligarch’s Daughter” (Harper, on sale Tuesday.)
Finder, 66, knows the territory intimately. He speaks Russian, was a Russian major at Yale, has a master in Russian studies from Harvard, is a member of the Association of Former Intelligence Officers. He’s visited Moscow many times.
“Oligarch’s Daughter,” set before Putin’s Ukraine invasion, offers a contemporary close-up of how America’s global rival operates undercover here in the States.
As the book begins Finder’s Everyman, Paul Brightman, is on the run, going as far underground as possible to stay alive. A Wall Street success, he fell in love with Tatyana, a photographer just beginning a career exhibiting in art galleries.
She is really the daughter of a powerful oligarch. To stay alive Paul must uncork a decades-old conspiracy that implicates top government officials. And figure out if he can trust Tatyana’s love.
Finder began by wrestling with his premise: “How do you do a thriller about someone living under a false identity in today’s world with Google, Gmail, surveillance counters everywhere?”
Finder’s oligarch is, he said in a phone interview, fictional. “I haven’t really run into any. I’ve had friends who worked for oligarchs — and I’ve heard stories, read things.”
Finder had a scary time writing this book. A first.
“Six days a week. I go into my office, which is right across the street from where we live, from 8:30 until around six.
“I haven’t been to Russia since Ukraine started and I’ll tell you why. Two years ago, I had a break-in at my office, which I never talked about.
“It was done in a very sophisticated way. The only thing stolen were my backup drives. Nothing valuable, nothing else. I called in a private eye, a friend, to figure out how they got in. He figured it out.
“Then I called a source in the FBI, a Russian expert, who came to my office. He said, ‘Were you on Russian state TV talking about how corrupt GRU, the Secret Service, is under Putin?’
“That was right, I said. He said, ‘Not very bright.’
“He speculated that the Russian Secret Service basically hires local talent, as they call it – emigres — to break into my office and steal these discs to find out what my sources are. What I’m into.
“And to let me know: They were there.”
Joseph Finder will be at Brookline Booksmith, 279 Harvard St., Jan. 29, at 7 p.m. in conversation with Hank Phillippi Ryan. And on Jan. 30 at 6:30 p.m., he is in conversation with William Landay at An Unlikely Story Bookstore, 111 S. Street, Plainville.
