The Fixer

April 27, 2015
Rick Hoffman, the hero of this so-so standalone from Thriller Award–winner Finder (Suspicion), has been fired from his high-flying job as a celebrity journalist, dumped by his fiancée, and reduced to camping out in his boyhood home in Cambridge, Mass., empty for years while his father has languished in a nursing home after a paralyzing stroke. When Rick finds more than $3.4 million in cash in the walls of his dad’s crumbling manse, it greatly improves his financial situation, but greatly diminishes the quality of his life as he searches for the source of the loot. Despite being attacked, then kidnapped and tortured, he doggedly continues to uncover his father’s sketchy past as “a bag man and a fixer.” Rick manages to touch a lot of nerves, most notably those of a high-profile PR man connected with Boston’s public works project known as the Big Dig. Rick’s look into his father’s past is touching and human, but readers should be prepared for an overblown plot and a predictable denouement. Agent: Daniel Conaway, Writers House.

July 27, 2015
Sins and fortunes of the father come into play when, in the blink of an eye, celebrity journalist Rick Hoffman loses his job, fiancée, and apartment, moves back into the long-vacant family home in Cambridge, Mass. and discovers millions of dollars hidden in the walls, apparently by his father. But the news of the hidden loot somehow surfaces and lures several very tough guys prepared to kidnap and torture Rick to get their hands on it. Finder uses breakneck pacing to keep his thriller on track, and reader Kearney, employing a crisp, no-nonsense delivery, keeps the story flowing fast and clear. For the exposition and for many of the characters—including women such as Rick’s faithless ex-fiancée and his just-reacquainted high school heartthrob—Kearney settles on a serviceable natural voice. But the hard-boiled types—the thugs, a half-friendly FBI agent, an extremely wealthy ex-cop, and the power broker pulling all the strings—are treated to the kind of gruff, very heated brogue one might hear unleashed in a Boston bar on the feast of St. Pat’s. A Dutton hardcover.

Steven Kearney narrates his second Finder novel, a somewhat predictable thriller with trademark finance angle and a Boston setting. Rick Hoffman, a journalist who is down on his luck, discovers $3.4 million that his infirmed father hid in the family home. Kearney delivers an array of realistic accents--Bostonian, Hispanic, Irish--and his voices stay true to the respective characters and genders. Occasionally, he completely misses the atmosphere of an event; for example, his response to a mobster holding a knife to Rick's throat seems trite and unconvincing. But when Rick's high school sweetheart is explaining her new nonprofit or when Rick hears an intruder in his home, Kearney is spot-on. Overall, he's convincing as Rick struggles to stay ahead of the mobsters pursuing him and the money. M.L.R. © AudioFile 2015, Portland, Maine