Joseph Finder

BIO

Joseph Finder’s plan was to become a spy. Or maybe a professor of Russian history. Instead he became a bestselling thriller writer.

Born in Chicago, Joe spent his early childhood living around the world, including Afghanistan and the Philippines. In fact, Joe’s first language --- even before English --- was Farsi, which he spoke as a child in Kabul. Finally, after a stint in Bellingham, WA, his family finally settled outside of Albany, NY.

After taking a high school seminar on the literature and history of Russia, Joe was hooked. He went on to major in Russian studies at Yale, where he also sang with the school's legendary a cappella group, the Whiffenpoofs (and likes to boast that he sang next to Ella Fitzgerald, an honorary Whiffenpoof). Joe graduated summa cum laude from Yale College, where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa, then completed a master’s degree at the Harvard Russian Research Center, and later taught on the Harvard faculty. He was recruited to the Central Intelligence Agency, but after discovering that a career in the bureaucracy of the Agency was less exciting than it seemed to be in the novels of Robert Ludlum, Joe decided to write instead.

His first book, published in 1983 when Joe was only 24, was a non-fiction exposé that resulted in threats of a libel suit. RED CARPET: THE CONNECTION BETWEEN THE KREMLIN AND AMERICA'S MOST POWERFUL BUSINESSMEN was the first book to reveal that the controversial multi-millionaire Dr. Armand Hammer, the CEO of Occidental Petroleum, had worked for Soviet intelligence in the 1920s and 1930s. Hammer’s attorneys threatened a massive lawsuit, but all of the book’s assertions were later confirmed when Soviet archives were briefly opened after the fall of the Soviet Union. (This book is no longer in print.)

But RED CARPET was only part of the story that Joe wanted to tell. So he wrote his first novel – the only way he could legally tell the whole Armand Hammer saga. Published in 1991, THE MOSCOW CLUB described events whose factual truth would only be revealed many years later. Ironically, Joe found confidential sources were more willing to reveal classified information to him as a novelist than when he was working as a journalist and academic. THE MOSCOW CLUB was named by Publishers Weekly as one of the ten best spy thrillers of all time and was published in thirty foreign countries.

What followed were three more critically-acclaimed thrillers – EXTRAORDINARY POWERS, THE ZERO HOUR (sold to Twentieth-Century Fox for a record sum) and HIGH CRIMES, which became a 2002 Fox film starring Ashley Judd and Morgan Freeman. Joe was invited on the movie set and even cast for a nonspeaking role as a JAG prosecutor.

Published in 2004, PARANOIA represented a major turning point in Joe’s career, landing on the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Publishers Weekly bestseller lists, among others. It was his first book to use the ruthless drive, corruption and conspiracy of the corporate world as riveting plotline. Called “fun...movie-ready...[with] twists aplenty...” by Entertainment Weekly, PARANOIA has been acquired by Gaumont, one of the world’s largest film production and distribution companies. The movie deal was announced in April 2009, with Barry Levy (“Vantage Point”) set to script the adaptation.

Joe’s next three novels --- COMPANY MAN, KILLER INSTINCT and POWER PLAY --- were all bestsellers in which things were decidedly not business as usual. He was quickly hailed as “the CEO of suspense.”

Joe’s forthcoming novel VANISHED, to be published in August 2009 by St. Martin's Press, will launch a four-book series featuring corporate security specialist Nick Heller. Trained in the Special Forces, Nick is a high-powered intelligence investigator – exposing secrets that powerful people would rather keep hidden. He's a guy you don't want to mess with. He's also the man you call when you need a problem fixed.

In addition to his fiction, Joe does occasional work for Hollywood and has written on espionage and international affairs for a number of publications, including TheDailyBeast.com, Forbes, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The New Republic. In an April 2006 New York Times Book Review article, Joe discussed his fascination with ambition as a subject for fiction. He roots for the Boston Red Sox and lives in Boston with his wife, daughter, and a needy golden retriever, Mia, a dropout from seeing-eye-dog school.

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INTERVIEW

August 21, 2009

New York Times bestselling author Joseph Finder's latest novel, VANISHED, introduces readers to Nick Heller, a Special Forces-trained intelligence investigator commissioned by his 14-year-old nephew to find and rescue his estranged brother. In this interview with Bookreporter.com's Joe Hartlaub, Finder discusses what sets his protagonist apart from those of his previous works and explains how his interest in family dynamics fueled the plot of this story. He also shares details on the book's companion comic, contemplates the future of communications technology, and reveals how he avoids giving in to distraction while writing.

Bookreporter.com: VANISHED introduces Nick Heller, who I found to be your most intriguing protagonist to date. Heller is an investigator for a high-powered intelligence firm who is drawn into what might be the most important case of his career: the disappearance of his brother Roger from whom he has been estranged for several years. Since Heller is the lynchpin for what will be a four-book series, what can you tell readers about him? What makes Nick tick? Did you give his character more thought than you would typically give to the protagonist in a stand-alone book as you sought to set up the series?

Joseph Finder: Let’s take the easiest question first: yes, I gave Nick a lot more thought than I’ve given the protagonists in my earlier novels. I mean, this is a guy who’s going to be with me --- and with readers --- for a long time, I hope. (Not just four books, either --- that’s just the deal I signed with my publisher.) I recently saw Laura Lippman refer to her series character as her “imaginary best friend,” and thought that was a great way to put it; this is someone I’m going to be living with, day in and day out, for years to come. So I wanted to like him, but I also really wanted a handle on what makes him tick --– a process that’s going to continue, just as we keep getting to know all the people in our lives.

Plus, I had to make sure he was built to last. That meant that he had to be a rich and full character, someone whose backstory would continue to emerge, whom I’d keep learning more about.

Nick has the usual characteristics you’d expect a thriller series protagonist to have: he’s smart, he’s brave, he’s resourceful, he has some unexpected skills (picked up in his time in Special Forces, which he joined out of rebellion against his rich father). But he has some big unresolved demons, too. His whole life was turned upside down when his father, a larger-than-life and truly evil figure, turned out to be a remorseless criminal. The idols and structures of his childhood disappeared overnight, which is probably why he wanted the structure and discipline of the military. He’s one of those guys who’s liked by all, but at the same time he’s pretty private.

BRC: The estrangement of brothers, which is the primary plot of VANISHED, is a topic of literature that goes back to the beginning of time. Why did you choose this topic --- with a number of unexpected and intriguing twists --- to be the propelling force behind VANISHED?

JF: I’m always fascinated by family dynamics, as one of five siblings myself, and I actually think it’s an area that doesn’t get enough attention in thrillers. We’re so used to reading about the conflicts between men and women, or the conflicts between sons and fathers (or father figures) --- but that sibling rivalry dynamic goes back to birth, and is just as complex and interesting as any other relationship people have. More so, maybe, because you can’t divorce a brother; and unless you’re Cain, you can’t kill him.

Of course, this relationship doesn’t exist in a vacuum, either. Nick and Roger’s relationship is inseparable from their relationship with their father, and Nick’s relationship with Roger’s wife and son is equally important to him, and to the book.

BRC: The prologue to VANISHED is great, but I loved the first chapter, since you begin it --- I’m going to be vague here, in order to avoid spoiling the surprise for our readers --- by breaking the one rule that practically everyone in the writing profession says must not be violated. And it works perfectly here. Once things had been set in stone, so to speak, did you have any regrets about beginning the book in this manner? Or did you anticipate that your readers would get the irony?

JF: Oh, come on --- if it’s good enough for Snoopy, it’s good enough for me.

BRC: Each of your novels contains a generous serving of interesting information, and VANISHED is no exception. I was particularly intrigued with what the novel reveals about communication technology, especially what can be done with a BlackBerry. What, in your opinion, has been the most significant technological achievement --- good or bad, and in any field --- in the past five years? And, based upon your own research while you were writing this book, what do you think will be the most important advancement in communications in the next five years?

JF: Without a doubt the biggest change is the Internet. It’s huge. Not only does it allow people all over the world to communicate quickly and easily, and establish a kind of intimacy --- through things like Twitter and Facebook --- but it also lets us exchange information at lightning speed.

This overwhelming availability of instant information has really changed the nature of secrets. Because information can move so freely and fast now, it does; the days of keeping secrets in traditional ways are over. We saw this most recently in the case of Governor Mark Sanford. How could he have thought that he could just disappear for five days and no one would notice? Within hours of someone noticing he was missing, the press had tracked down where he was, whom he was with, and had even gotten hold of some of his love letters. His whole life became part of the 24-hour news cycle before he’d even gotten back into the country.

What this does, I think, is make disinformation much more important to the business of keeping secrets. No one can listen to everything; no one can process all that information, or even always identify the items that are true or most significant. It’s also gotten alarmingly easy for individuals and organizations to represent themselves in cyberspace as things or people they aren’t.

So the Internet, as great as it is, also makes us all incredibly vulnerable. Everything is tied together --- communications, power grids, even our defense systems, our eyes and ears. And…well, I can’t talk too much about that except to say that it scares the hell out of me.

If I had to speculate about the biggest communications advances in the next five years, I’d guess that they’re going to involve the Internet and video and identity. We can already have video chats through programs like Skype; it’s just a matter of time before every BlackBerry or personal communications device has that video capability, just like Dick Tracy’s wrist communicator. Soon, we’ll have high-fidelity voice over the Internet combined with sophisticated robotics, enabling us to communicate and actually do things at great distances just by speaking.

BRC: One of the most intriguing elements of VANISHED was the idea of the e-mail service run through a website known as Incaseofdeath.net, so much so that I checked the URL, which has apparently been parked. Is this an idea of yours that you plan to explore as a side project in the future, or did you hear about it elsewhere?

JF: Um…Incaseofdeath.net is mine. I had the idea, and reserved the URL just to make sure that no one else was using it by the time VANISHEDcame out. I love the idea, which has some parallels in the real world --- there’s a service called www.mylastemail.com, and another one called Deathswitch.com that actually works in a way very similar to Incaseofdeath.com. I didn’t know about either of these when I thought of Incaseofdeath.com, but it’s a great concept, isn’t it? I’d love to do something with the site at some point in the future, but that’s still in the works.

BRC: At one point in VANISHED, while in a parking garage, Nick utilizes something that I call the “gravel trick,” sprinkling gravel around his automobile to see if someone has tampered with his car while he is away from it. Is this original to you? If so, what inspired it? If not, where did you learn it?

JF: No --- it’s based on a very old trick, probably going back to caveman hunters. I can’t remember where I first read it, but I know I’ve read spy novels in which the hero sprinkled, say, baby powder around a desk or in front of a door in order to be able to tell whether anyone had disturbed the room while he was gone.

BRC: In your acknowledgements at the conclusion of VANISHED, you include the names of a number of experts in a great many fields. Can you share with us some background on your research?

JF: Research is my obsession --- I’d almost say it’s my hobby, because I enjoy it so much. I’m constantly gathering information, not just because I might want to use it in a book, but also because I just think it’s cool to know this stuff. I’ve been incredibly fortunate in being able to make contacts in many different fields, going back to my earliest days as a journalist. In fact, what I’ve found is that many subject matter experts are far more willing to talk to novelists than they are to talk to journalists. There isn’t that same expectation of an adversarial relationship, and as a novelist I have more time to get into details than most journalists do. And of course, as a novelist I can always say that what I’m writing is fiction, so things that need to be secret can remain secret.

Being in Boston is a great help, as it’s a major center of learning and science. If I have a question about an esoteric topic, I can pick up the phone and call friends at Harvard or MIT or Boston University, and if they don’t have an answer, chances are great that they know someone who does. Six degrees of separation definitely applies; I’m willing to follow a trail from one person to another until I get the answer I’m looking for.

One resource I had for this book that I didn’t have before is Twitter. Twitter’s a mixed blessing --- it’s a terrible distraction, as well as being great fun and a fantastic resource --- but it’s really amazing that I’m able to post a question to Twitter and get offers of help back from experts almost instantaneously.

BRC: Roger and Lauren Heller each have different opinions regarding sushi, a factor that indirectly jump-starts the events in VANISHED. So tell us, where do you fall on the question of sushi? Are you closer to Roger or to Lauren?

JF: I like sushi. I’m more with Roger. But I have friends --- and, shall we say, family members --- who regard raw fish as vile.

BRC: Nick's nephew helps him with this case by providing him with a pivotal clue, but he shares it in an interesting way with a drawing in a comic. What inspired you to want to use a comic in your work?

JF: When I was a kid, I was obsessed with comics. Before I wanted to be a writer, I wanted to draw cartoons. Over the past few years, it’s been really exciting to see the rebirth of comics as “graphic novels,” and I’ve been very impressed with the work that authors like Brad Meltzer, Michael Chabon, Gregg Hurwitz and others are doing in the field. It seemed natural to give Gabe some of my own adolescent interests, although we don’t share the same taste in music.

BRC: I have read that you actually developed a copy of this comic for your readers. What can you tell us about this?

JF: Yes --- it’s a short comic called THE COWL, based on the story in VANISHED. Brian Azzarello wrote it, and it was illustrated by a wonderful Spanish artist named Benito Gallego. I met Azz at last year’s Bouchercon, along with some of the guys from DC Comics, and it occurred to me that it could be great to have a comic book that was not only a tie-in with VANISHED, but an actual clue to the book’s central mystery. I pitched the idea to Will Dennis, Senior Editor at DC Comics, and he didn’t laugh at me; he helped me find Benito, and make the dream a reality. I love how it turned out, it’s a childhood dream come true. (Readers can see the comic book for themselves and read more about its backstory at http://www.josephfinder.com/books/vanished/endofthequest.)

BRC: Do you ever have trouble with what is popularly known as “writer’s block”? If so, what method(s) do you utilize to break through it? And how do you keep your creative batteries recharged?

JF: Writing’s a job, and you have to go to work every day, the same way as you would do any other job. I always say, plumbers don’t get plumber’s block and chefs don’t get chef’s block. So no, I don’t get writer’s block; I keep writing, and if I have to revise it later, I revise it later.

What I do get, sometimes, is distracted. I sit down at my desk, and there are 10 things I’d rather do than write: answer e-mails, respond to Twitter messages, see what my friends (or my daughter and her friends) are doing on Facebook, research one more cool way to trace a cell phone. That’s why I have to have a deadline. I also have a giant hourglass on my desk that I use to measure out stretches of writing time; while the sands are running, I can’t be doing anything but writing.

As far as the creative batteries go, thank goodness that’s not a problem for me. In fact, I’d say I almost have the opposite problem, of too many ideas --- “Well, what if this happened? No, what if it was this? Wait, how about this?” It’s a matter of choosing which way this particular story’s going to go, and being content to save other ideas for future books.

BRC: What can readers expect from Nick in future installments? Have the next three books in the series already been plotted? When will the second one be out?

JF: The second one will be out about this time next year; I’m finishing it now. What I can tell you is that it takes Nick into a new phase of his career, although he’ll still be working with Dorothy, and it’ll take him out of the United States, to more exotic locales. The biggest change is that Nick’s going to move to Boston, the city where he grew up (and where I happen to live…I’m no idiot). I’ve got plenty of ideas for books three and four, but I’m not talking.

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INTERVIEW

August 24, 2007

Joseph Finder is the international bestselling author of such thrillers as PARANOIA, COMPANY MAN and KILLER INSTINCT. His latest work of fiction, POWER PLAY, takes the office intrigue for which he is best known out of the boardroom and into a secluded lodge in the wilderness, where a group of executives on a company retreat are held for ransom. In this interview with Bookreporter.com's Joe Hartlaub, Finder explains what inspired this change of setting and describes how his natural curiosity and his need to explore new things prompts him to write about a wide range of topics. He also characterizes his protagonists as an exercise in wishful thinking, ponders what he would do differently in his career if he were given the chance, and shares details about his upcoming four-book series.

Bookreporter.com: One of the most enjoyable elements of picking up and reading a new Joseph Finder novel is the certain knowledge that one will come away from it educated and entertained. In POWER PLAY, the reader learns a fascinating amount of information about two topics that, in lesser hands, would be tough sledding --- airplane construction and international banking security measures. How do you pick the subject matter you cover? Are these topics that pique your own curiosity and thus motivate you to learn more about them? Or are they topics with which you have, at least initially, some degree of familiarity?
 
Joseph Finder: Thanks! In fact, one of the things I love most about my job is the ability to find out all kinds of things on a very deep, insider level --- in part because of my sources in both the intelligence community and the corporate world, and in part because of the simple fact that people will tell me things, as a novelist, that they’d never tell a journalist. And I love passing the insider stuff on to my readers in the form of page-turning entertainment.  
 
In each book I like to bring my readers into a new world. Remember the novels of Arthur Hailey? STRONG MEDICINE was about the pharmaceutical industry; AIRPORT was about, well, airports; WHEELS was about the car business. I loved learning about these different fields. James Michener did the same thing. I think of my thrillers as being in the similar vein. Each one takes us some place new. I usually pick something that intrigues me but that I know nothing about. With POWER PLAY, I decided it would be cool to learn about the business of making airplanes, so I created the fictional Hammond Aerospace Corporation from bits and pieces of Boeing, Lockheed and Airbus. 
 
But the what-if premise that gave rise to POWER PLAY was the notion of an entire corporate leadership team being held for ransom. Could that happen? How much money could the bad guys demand, given the vast resources of some of these major corporations? And how could the bad guys get away with it? 
 
So that meant finding out about the whole kidnap-and-ransom industry and how that works. And money laundering. By the time I finished POWER PLAY, I’d become quite expert at some very bad things.
 
BRC: Another of the significant elements of POWER PLAY --- in fact, of all your novels --- is your attention to detail. Your research appears exhaustive, and you are quite generous in acknowledging your sources. How do you go about finding them? And what methods do you use to ascertain their veracity?
 
JF: As my readers know by now, I like to get my facts right; it is funny if you think about it, since --- after all --- I’m writing fiction, right? Why can’t you make everything up? Actually, I want people to come away from my books having learned some really interesting things they wouldn’t get anywhere else. By now, I have a pretty good network of sources; one of my best is an organization I belong to, the Association of Former Intelligence Officers, a terrific group whose membership is mostly made up of retired spies. It’s amazing how well connected those men and women are, so I put out the word there. I call or e-mail friends. And sometimes, I just do research on the Internet and locate the experts, which is how I got to some of my best sources in the kidnap-and-ransom field. I sometimes drive them crazy, running my fictional scenarios by them over and over again, kicking the tires to make sure my fiction is plausible, double-checking them against other experts. I may not get every single fact right, but I do come awfully close. My feeling is that if I can get past the two or three people in the world who know the most about my subject --- whether it’s money laundering or how to make the composite sections of airplane wings --- then I’ve done a good job and I’m happy.
 
BRC: Jake Landry, the protagonist of POWER PLAY, is easily one of the most interesting characters I’ve encountered in a thriller this year. He is a fish out of water, but in many ways is the smartest shark on the beach. Who is Jake modeled after? Is there a bit of Joseph Finder in Jake Landry?
 
JF: Yes and no...I mean, there’s always a part of me in all of my heroes, since that’s how I’m able to make them feel real and compelling; I need to understand them deeply in order to make my readers believe them. But there’s always an element of wish-fulfillment about them, too. Jake has all sorts of talents I don’t have. I’m a decent shot, but he’s a real marksman. He really knows how to fight. Then again, even though Jake and I both grew up in upstate New York, he had a much more difficult, much more violent childhood. I loved writing him, I have to say --- I always like the underdog. 

BRC: Each of your novels has been very different from your previous works, and POWER PLAY is no exception. One of the biggest surprises for me is its setting. While some of your previous works have used the world for a backdrop, POWER PLAY is set almost entirely within a Canadian hunting lodge. Was it a conscious decision on your part to make a change of venue, so to speak, to a much more claustrophobic setting, or did you unconsciously find that the story you wanted to tell was better served in such an environment?
 
JF: From the beginning, I intended POWER PLAY as a way to take the office intrigue that people seemed to like about PARANOIA and KILLER INSTINCT, etc., and move it outside, out of the office. I wanted to write a story that was just about all action. At the same time, I wanted there to be one locus of action, one contained locale --- a crucible in which all the characters could clash with each other and all the unstated issues could come out. There’s a kind of David Mamet-like aspect to POWER PLAY --- almost play-like in terms of the confined setting --- yet it’s also nonstop action, which is not play-like at all. Basically, I like to try something new with each book, and this was my way to do it. It wasn’t easy to write --- it was, in fact, the hardest book I’ve written --- but in the end, I was happy with the way it came out.

BRC: I’d like to talk about your writing process, especially as it pertains to the new novel. What was the seed that blossomed into POWER PLAY?
 
JF: One of my CEO friends --- a guy who runs a major corporation --- told me about how he’d just taken his entire leadership to a really over-the-top salmon-fishing lodge in British Columbia, where they were all, as he put it, “off the grid” --- offline, out of touch with the office. No cell phone reception, no phone, no BlackBerry, no Internet. My first reaction was: “My God, what if something had happened to you guys?” He replied, “Don’t even think that way. Please.”
 
Well, I’m a novelist, and I couldn’t help but think that way. I’d just gotten a great idea for an action story that could fold in all sorts of great elements --- conspiracy, corruption, the clash of personalities. 
 
BRC: While all of your novels have been enjoyable, POWER PLAY especially is very streamlined reading, nearly impossible to put down once started. How do you get there? Do you engage in multiple rewrites of the story as a whole, or finish each page completely before moving on to the next? Do you have a select group of people other than yourself who “test drive” each of your novels purely for readability?
 
JF: As I said, this one took a lot of work, and I went through a number of major revisions on it. I wrote several complete drafts. I try to avoid rewriting page by page or chapter by chapter. I like to see the whole thing in front of me to see if it works, and why or why not. I have three major readers --- my brother, who’s the editorial director of The New Yorker; my agent, Molly Friedrich; and my editor at St. Martin’s, Keith Kahla. Each of them is a very smart, honest reader and doesn’t hesitate to tell me what he or she thinks. I take their criticisms very seriously. Unlike most writers, I actually love being edited. I think it makes the end product much stronger, and I’m always grateful to anyone who takes the time to read my manuscripts closely and tell me honestly what they like --- or don’t like --- about them.
 
BRC: Let’s play “what if” for a minute. What if you wake up one morning and decide you no longer want to write? What would you do instead?
 
JF: I couldn’t write anything --- even TV or movies? I’d hate that. Maybe I’d become a producer of TV shows, since there are some great ones out there. Basically, I’m a storyteller at heart, though, and in whatever I do --- whether I directed movies or created TV shows --- I’d aim to tell stories to a large popular audience. 

BRC: Your first book, RED CARPET, was a nonfiction work, a book that continues to be discussed some two decades after publication. Do you have any plans, or desire, to return to nonfiction in the future?
 
JF: No. I find that I get all the pleasure I used to get in nonfiction --- finding things out and telling other people --- by writing novels. In fact, I hardly ever write articles anymore, which I used to do quite often. I just find that I reach a much, much larger readership through my fiction than through my nonfiction. And I enjoy writing it a whole lot more.
 
Q: What led you to writing thrillers? Are there any particular authors --- of any genre --- who have influenced your style?
 
JF: Robert Ludlum first turned me on to the idea of writing thrillers. I read THE BOURNE IDENTITY and THE MATARESE CIRCLE one summer in college. (And as it turned out, my first agent was Ludlum’s, and I got to know Bob Ludlum that way.) But I was also inspired, early on, by Frederick Forsyth (THE DAY OF THE JACKAL) and Ira Levin (ROSEMARY'S BABY, THE BOYS FROM BRAZIL, etc.). My early style was most influenced by Ludlum and Forsyth, but then I discovered Nelson DeMille, whose GOLD COAST is one of the best thrillers ever written, I think --- and Nelson, who’s also a friend, is one of the best writers in the genre --- and I realized that a book could be funny and observant and insightful while still being really suspenseful.

BRC: What do you feel has been the single most important element of the success of your writing career?

JF: Finding the right publisher. I mean it --- I’m not being modest. I really think that the most important thing an author can do is to find an editor who will become his advocate and publish his book well. I think I’d written some good books before PARANOIA, but it was my first hardcover bestseller --- and that was because of my publisher, St. Martin’s Press, and my editor, Keith Kahla.

BRC: If you could begin again, what, if anything, would you do differently?
 
JF: The list is too long! I wouldn’t have moved around from publisher to publisher as I did --- I’d have stayed with my first publisher. You really need to give a publisher the chance to publish you for several books in a row, to build your audience. Rarely does any one publisher hit a home run the first time at bat. And I’d have written more often --- a book a year. Once I started doing that, my readership started growing significantly. But until I signed with St. Martin’s, no one had ever suggested I do that, so I wrote my novels whenever I felt like it. I could keep going, but that’s a start...

BRC: POWER PLAY will be your last stand-alone novel for a while, as you will be concentrating on a series that will have at least four titles. What can you tell us about this series, and when might readers expect to see the first book?
 
JF: I don’t know exactly when the first in the series will come out --- late next year, I expect. My hero is Nick Heller, a high-powered corporate investigator based in Boston who investigates crime and fraud and conspiracy around the world. The thing that excites me about starting this series is that it’ll bring in all the workplace intrigue that people liked in PARANOIA and my novels since then, and combine it with the international action that I wrote in my earlier books, like THE ZERO HOUR and THE MOSCOW CLUB. For a long time, I resisted doing one continuing character because I didn’t want to do the old cop/FBI/P.I. thing. But in Nick Heller, I’ve found a character unlike any others out there, to the best of my knowledge. I’m really looking forward to these books, and I think my readers are going to enjoy them a lot too. I hope so, anyway.

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May 19, 2006

Joseph Finder, the New York Times bestselling author of such stand-alone thrillers as PARANOIA and COMPANY MAN, recently spoke with Bookreporter.com's Carol Fitzgerald, Joe Hartlaub and Wiley Saichek. In this interview, Finder discusses the real-life inspirations behind the characters in his latest thriller, KILLER INSTINCT, and explains why he chose to set them in the world of consumer electronics. He also describes the intensive research required for each of his novels, gives details on a pending big-screen adaptation of PARANOIA, and shares his thoughts on the possibility of writing a series.

Bookreporter.com: Plasma screen televisions and the people who sell them hardly would seem to be compelling fodder for a modern thriller. Yet KILLER INSTINCT uses those elements to create an addictive and compelling read. What inspired you to choose the world of consumer electronics as the topic for a novel?

Joseph Finder: Glad you enjoyed the story! But I'm not sure I agree with the premise of your question. The world of salespeople has always made great drama --- ever see David Mamet's Glengarry Glen Ross? Not to mention Death of a Salesman. And the millions of readers of Michael Crichton's DISCLOSURE can tell you that a thriller set in something as mundane-sounding as a company that makes disk drives (!) was actually quite gripping.

The truth is, I think that professional book people tend to be a bit out of touch with the more than hundred million people in this country alone who work in business and the corporation. In fact, I'd go further --- I think that a vast majority of Americans spend most of their working hours in the workplace, and they know that it's in many ways a microcosm of the whole world. There's ambition and success, there's greed and generosity, there are duplicitous colleagues and close friends.

It just so happens, though, that there are hardly any novels set in the world in which most of us spend most of our time. Law firms, sure. Police forces, always. But the sort of thing that John Grisham does for lawyers, I'm hoping to do for everyone else in the working world. And it seems that people are starting to catch on.

I chose the plasma TV business for one simple reason: I was fascinated by it. I'm a gadget guy, I'll admit, and I'd just bought a flat-screen TV so my daughter (and I) could watch the Red Sox in high definition. I wanted to know more about how these things work. Each of my last three novels has been set in a different kind of company. I thought a company that made and sold flat-screen TVs could be really interesting as a setting. And I was right. The research was fascinating.

BRC: Kurt Semko is a memorable character. Those opening scenes, where Jason Steadman is sitting in the cab of Semko's tow truck, foreshadow what is to come and are some of the most compelling passages in KILLER INSTINCT. What was your inspiration for Semko?

JF: I got to know a number of Special Forces operatives in the Boston area while I was researching KILLER INSTINCT. The ones I became friends with were smart, funny and genial. This was a great disappointment, since I wanted someone who had a cruel streak, who could be both charismatic and manipulative. Several of them told me about a few of their colleagues --- bad seeds who came back from Afghanistan or Iraq and got into serious trouble --- and that's when Kurt Semko began to come to life.

BRC: Science fiction novels some six decades ago predicted that corporations, as well as nations, would be at war in the future. KILLER INSTINCT demonstrates how, at many levels, this has come true. Steadman has as much to fear from his co-workers as he does from the competition. Were some of the events in KILLER INSTINCT based upon war stories you've heard from sales managers for various companies? Are the characters modeled after individuals you have known, or have heard of anecdotally?

JF: A lot of what happens in KILLER INSTINCT is based on stories I heard in my research. Not that this kind of thing happens often. But I took the extreme examples, the worst case scenarios. This is, after all, suspense fiction. And sure, I turned the dial up to eleven (to quote Spinal Tap). I created Jason, my hero, out of a number of people I met --- friendly, amiable, low-key, likeable. And his colleagues were based on people I met as well. I think that's why so many of them feel real or recognizable to my first readers. I've painted them from life.

BRC: On a related note, there is a passage in KILLER INSTINCT that takes place at TechComm, wherein Kent "Gordy" Gordon, Steadman's boss, delivers an embarrassing soliloquy. This passage had a sold ring of truth to it. What was your inspiration for this?

JF: Ah, yes. What happens to Gordy is based on a real story I heard --- about a real VP of sales who did something very similar at a kickoff, and got in real trouble. But for a variety of reasons --- legal, and not to spoil the story --- I shouldn't say any more.

BRC: One of the most enjoyable aspects of KILLER INSTINCT and your other novels is the way you take a topic that is largely outside the scope of public experience --- in the case of KILLER INSTINCT, the sale and marketing of advanced-technology television sets and monitors --- and pull the curtain back to reveal what lies behind the scenes. How do you choose which industry to write about? How much time do you spend on research and gaining access to the industry of your choice prior to beginning the actual writing? Do you continue to research as you write? Do you share portions of the manuscript with your sources?

JF: When I read a thriller, I want to visit a new world, experience and learn things I didn't know. It has to be interesting to my readers, of course. But it has to be really interesting to me, since I have to spend a year immersed in it. So I pick something I want to find out more about. Not just the very cool technology in the plasma business, but the high-testosterone, high-pressure sales end of things. Each of my novels is set in a different industry, sort of like Arthur Hailey used to do. I don't like to repeat myself. I don't like to write the same book over and over again, as many of my writer colleagues seem to do. How incredibly boring both for me and for my readers!

I usually spend a month or so researching the industry in which my new novel is set. Then a couple of months interviewing people who work in it, traveling and visiting these companies, getting to know them well enough to portray them. I need to delve in deep enough to get the texture, the rhythms, the way people talk, their concerns. Once I feel I have a handle on it --- enough to tell the story with authority, anyway --- then I start plotting and then writing.

And yes, as I write, I do find that I need to call or email my few trusted sources and ask them questions. How might this happen? Would this ever taken place? Has this ever happened? Once in a while I give portions of a manuscript to an expert --- I've done so with my homicide experts when I was writing COMPANY MAN, so the murder investigation plot would ring true. But usually I don't have to.

BRC: What are the most challenging aspects about writing a novel set in a corporate environment?

JF: I guess the toughest part is getting the details right, the things that my characters would think about and talk about and worry about. Since every company I write about is different, the stuff they do is different, and I need to get that exactly right. I'd say that's what I find most challenging. The thing is, I need to become an instant expert in whatever my fictional company does --- whether it's cell phones and BlackBerrys or fancy office furniture or flat-screen TVs. Not that I'm going to bore my readers with every last detail. Not at all. But I need to know it way better than most of my readers do so I can simplify it, predigest it for my readers, make it smooth, make the story fly by.

BRC: What is your writing schedule like? How many hours per day do you work? Do you prefer outlining, or simply letting things take their course? And how many months does it normally take you to finish a work, from concept to final draft?

JF: I don't write every day, but I do work every day. That might be plotting or research, or just taking notes. And I work easily 10 hours a day. When I'm writing full blast, I probably work 16 hours a day, getting up at 3 or 4 in the morning. When I start writing, it usually takes me 3 or 4 months, no more, to finish a good draft.  Then another month or so to do a final draft. But I can only start writing when the well is filled up --- when I know enough to start telling the story.

BRC: You write stand-alones, not series titles. What attracts you to this? Has there ever been a character that you have thought about anchoring a series around?

JF: I write thrillers, not police procedurals, not private-eye books. Novels whose heroes are investigators --- those are the ones that can have series characters. My characters have incredibly dramatic, scary things happen to them. They don't just stand back, crack wise and break noses. Their lives are in peril. They change in the course of the book. No way could you do that with a series character, who must remain fairly consistent from novel to novel.

The only character I've written who could make a series is Audry Rhimes, from COMPANY MAN. And who knows...maybe...

BRC: Your novel HIGH CRIMES was adapted into a commercially successful film. Are any of your other novels in some stage of film development?

JF: PARANOIA was sold to Paramount. They got Michael Tolkin, author of THE PLAYER, to write a script, which turned out to be brilliant. It could be a great movie --- someday. But then Paramount had a regime change, and the new regime did what always happens in Hollywood --- they threw out every project put into development by their predecessors. I've given the producer a few months to try to set PARANOIA up at another studio. I'll check in with him fairly soon to see what progress he's made. I think PARANOIA could make a great movie. We'll see.

BRC: What can you tell us about your next novel?

JF: Not much. Just that it involves the aerospace industry --- a company that makes jet planes --- and it's an incredibly exciting story, moreso, and with more action, than any I've written to date.

You can tell I'm enjoying it.

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