Find You First

December 1, 2020

Terminally ill tech billionaire Miles Cookson is eager to find the nine children he sired as a sperm donor when he was young and struggling, even as film documentarian Chloe Swanson is eager to find her biological father. Meanwhile, Miles's various children (and heirs) are being wiped off the map--along with evidence of their existence. With a 100,000-copy first printing.

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Starred review from March 29, 2021
At the start of this suspenseful, expertly paced thriller from bestseller Barclay (Elevator Pitch), two people identifying themselves as police bang on the door of 21-year-old Todd Cox, who runs phone scams targeting the elderly out of his trailer home near Springfield, Mass. Eager to appear innocent, Cox lets them in, only to discover they’re frauds. The fake cops inject Cox with a lethal drug before sealing him in a body bag and sanitizing the place and the surrounding area. One of them comments, “Two down. Seven to go.” Flash back three weeks. Miles Cookson, a Connecticut software millionaire, has been diagnosed with incurable Huntington’s disease. As Huntington’s is genetic, Cookson decides to use his affluence to bribe a desperate employee of the sperm bank he donated to decades earlier to trace any possible children, both to warn them that they may carry fatal genes and to name them in his will. The list he gets contains nine names, including Cox’s, hinting at a link to the initial homicide. Barclay makes even secondary characters feel real. Fans of Daniel Palmer will be pleased. Agent: Helen Heller, Helen Heller Agency.