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BIO
In the 15 years since the publication of his first novel, THE MOSCOW CLUB, Joseph Finder has established himself as one of the world’s best and most successful thriller writers. His most recent novel, KILLER INSTINCT, made bestseller lists around the country, as did his two previous books, COMPANY MAN and PARANOIA. His novel HIGH CRIMES became a hit movie starring Ashley Judd and Morgan Freeman, and his novel ZERO HOUR was also purchased for Hollywood.
Joe’s background is not in literature, but in international politics. Born in Chicago, he moved around the world with his family, spending much of his early childhood in Afghanistan and the Philippines. He later moved with his family to Bellingham, Washington and then to Albany, New York where he attended high school.
Joe majored in Russian studies at Yale, where he also sang with the school's legendary a cappella group, the Whiffenpoofs (see the photo gallery for a picture of Joe with Ella Fitzgerald, before a Whiffenpoofs concert). After graduating summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa, he completed a master's degree at the Harvard Russian Research Center and later taught on the Harvard faculty.
Joe’s first book, RED CARPET: The Connection Between the Kremlin and America's Most Powerful Businessmen, was published in 1983, when Joe was only 24. This controversial expose about multi-millionaire Dr. Armand Hammer's ties to Soviet intelligence is no longer in print, due mainly to Hammer’s threats of a libel suit. The book’s assertions were confirmed after the fall of the Soviet Union, when newly-published documents verified Joe’s research.
RED CARPET was only a portion of the story that Joe wanted to tell, however – legally, he felt that the only way to tell the rest of the story was to write a novel. The result was THE MOSCOW CLUB, published in 1991. Ironically, Joe found that his confidential sources were more willing to reveal classified information to him as a novelist than they were when he was working as a journalist and academic. THE MOSCOW CLUB was eventually published in thirty foreign countries and became a bestseller throughout Europe.
Joe’s second novel, EXTRAORDINARY POWERS (1994), about the discovery of a Soviet mole in the highest ranks of the CIA, was published just days before the unmasking of CIA mole Aldrich Ames. THE ZERO HOUR, published in 1996, was the first novel ever written with the official cooperation of both the CIA and the FBI. The movie version of Joe’s fourth novel, HIGH CRIMES, premiered in April 2002, starring Ashley Judd and Morgan Freeman.
PARANOIA, published in 2004, represented a major turning point in Joe’s career. Not only was it his most commercially and critically successful book to date, but it was also his first book to use the business world as a setting for crime fiction. Joe discussed his fascination with ambition as a subject for fiction in a piece for the New York Times Book Review in April 2006: “The craving for success has become the love that dare not speak its name… the drive to get ahead is registered, recognized and, usually, reviled: but it’s seldom owned.”
Joe’s determination to own this drive has led to his being described as “the CEO of suspense.” He’s reluctant to embrace the “corporate thriller” tag, but continues to find fertile ground for suspense in the business world. COMPANY MAN, published in 2005, is set in a struggling furniture-manufacturing firm; KILLER INSTINCT looks at the cutthroat world of high-technology sales. POWER PLAY, coming from St. Martin's in August 2007, features characters who work in the aerospace industry.
In addition to his fiction, Joe does occasional work for Hollywood and has written on espionage and international affairs relations for a number of publications, including Forbes, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The New Republic. He roots for the Boston Red Sox, and lives in Boston with his wife and daughter.
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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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INTERVIEW
April
22, 2005
Bookreporter.com's Suspense/Thriller Author Spotlight Team (Carol Fitzgerald,
Joe Hartlaub and Wiley Saichek) interviewed Joseph Finder,
author of COMPANY MAN. Finder
talks about his inspiration for his latest thriller, why he especially enjoyed
writing the character of Detective Audrey Rhimes --- his female protagonist ---
and the similarities and differences between this novel and his previous bestseller,
PARANOIA.
Bookreporter.com: What was your inspiration for COMPANY MAN?
Joseph Finder: After I wrote PARANOIA, about a young slacker who hates
his job and is promoted way up the ladder in his new company, I decided I wanted
to write about life from the other side --- from the top. I wanted my hero to
be a CEO. You never see a CEO as a hero --- the CEO is always the bad guy. I thought
it was time for popular fiction to have a CEO-protagonist. Once I made that decision,
a lot of other things fell into place. What wrenching personal drama might be
faced? What crisis at work? That's how I settled upon the storyline in which a
guy who's the head of a corporation goes from being the most beloved man in town
to the most hated, after laying off half his workforce. My novels always focus
on the personal drama a character goes through --- that's what makes it interesting
to me and, I hope, to the reader.
BRC: Readers will wonder if Nick Conover is based on anyone in particular.
What's your reply to that?
JF: I was pretty careful not to model him
on any of the many CEOs I interviewed for this book. I was able to talk to a lot
of CEOs, at companies ranging from Steelcase to Kellogg's to a number of other
corporations that don't want me naming names. But I took bits and pieces of the
people I met, and then created a character who came from a blue-collar background,
was a regular guy --- not a genius --- but a very likeable person.
BRC: COMPANY MAN is a novel loaded with situations that pose moral dilemmas
and value issues, which contribute to rather than distract from the suspenseful
elements. Did you set out to write the book knowing that these moral dilemmas
were going to be posed, or did they evolve as you started writing?
JF: Yes, I started out knowing that my characters
were going to face some tough moral choices. I wanted my CEO hero to deal with
the same problems real-life CEOs sometimes have to face. Same with my police detective
hero. I don't want to reveal too much here, obviously, but these kinds of tough
choices are what give us a glimpse into the characters' inner lives.
BRC: Detective Audrey Rhimes is one of the most memorable characters in COMPANY
MAN. Rhimes is a person of unabashed deep and abiding faith, who lives her beliefs
every day, and every moment, of her life. She has qualities that are rare in most
characters found in mainstream fiction. She is a catalyst for many of the positive
things that occur in COMPANY MAN. What, or perhaps more accurately, who, was your
inspiration for Audrey Rhimes? And will we perhaps see more of her in the future?
JF: I loved writing Audrey. I'd never written
a character before who had a strong religious faith, and I realized that you rarely
encounter such characters in fiction. In most popular fiction, a character with
a strong religious affiliation is more likely to be a serial killer than a hero.
Actually, she was inspired by two homicide detectives I interviewed for COMPANY
MAN. One was a black woman on the Boston police force; the other was a retired
homicide investigator who was with the Grand Rapids police. Both were strongly
religious. I think a belief in God is what motivates a lot of homicide detectives
to do their difficult work. My retired Grand Rapids cop source had a sign on his
desk that said, "Remember: We work for God." I borrowed that for Audrey. I don't
know if she'll appear in another book, but I hope so.
BRC: In an interview with Tom Perrotta, the author of LITTLE CHILDREN, on your
website, you talk about the differences between COMPANY MAN and your last book,
PARANOIA, and how the books are both similar and different. Can you share those
insights with our readers?
JF: Unlike some writers who turn out the same
book year after year, with only slight variations, I never write the same book
twice. I'd find it too boring, and I think I owe my readers a new book each year,
not a retread of last year's model. PARANOIA was told in the voice of a 26-year-old
guy, very sardonic and wise-ass and ironic. COMPANY MAN is told in the third-person
because there are two protagonists, not one --- a CEO and a homicide investigator
--- and we root for both of them even though they're working against each other.
Nick Conover, in COMPANY MAN, is older than Adam Cassidy in PARANOIA. Nick's a
family man. Audrey's a childless woman in a failing marriage. But both novels
have a lot of similarities too --- the same backstabbing at the workplace, the
same scary intrigue, the same ironic humor. And both of them are about people
and their relationship to their jobs. I think both books have a lot of funny stuff
in them, and some scary scenes, and I think --- I hope --- that both are fast-moving
and exciting.
BRC: One underlying plot in the book has to do with the remodeling of the kitchen
in Conover's house to his deceased wife's exact specifications. In one scene in
particular we see the "inner emotion" of Conover when he lays out in specific
terms how the renovation must be completed. Did you intentionally create this
remodel as a plot device to see "inside" Conover?
JF: Yes --- I wanted us to see Nick's devotion
to his late wife, and how far it went. Here's a guy who doesn't care about how
he dresses or what he spends money on, but since his wife was so concerned about
renovating the kitchen of their big new house, he has to care too, in order to
honor her memory. We see how torn he is --- ordinarily he'd never think about
what kind of granite counter to use in the kitchen or what kind of appliances,
but he wants every detail done just the way his late wife wanted. In other words,
my intention was for us to see Nick grieving for his wife, but in a non-sentimental
way.
BRC: You make strong and effective use of metaphors in COMPANY MAN, especially
at its climax. Are there any authors who utilize metaphoric styles who have influenced
you?
JF: Sure, but it's mostly the literary writers,
ranging from Jonathan Franzen (THE CORRECTIONS) to Sue Miller (THE GOOD MOTHER)
to Philip Roth to Saul Bellow. I'm writing popular fiction --- entertainment ---
not Literature. But I think we thriller writers should feel free to borrow the
best techniques used by our more literarily serious comrades. After all, we're
all just trying to tell a story --- just in different ways.
BRC: Your last book PARANOIA was a huge success. Did that add any pressure
to you as you sat down to write COMPANY MAN?
JF: Yeah, somewhat. Way more readers discovered
me through PARANOIA, and I was aware that they'd expect a story every bit as good
as that. I knew my publisher wanted something as appealing as PARANOIA too. But
when I finally sat down to write the book, I just wrote it with blinders on, trying
to do the best story I could.
BRC: In PARANOIA there was a lot of talk about the ending and "what happened."
What are you hearing most from early readers of COMPANY MAN?
JF: Just about all of the early readers of
COMPANY MAN loved the ending. There's a big twist at the end of the book that
catches almost every reader by surprise. But most readers, I think, find the very
last scene of COMPANY MAN more satisfying than the very last scene of PARANOIA,
which was pretty controversial. I liked them both.
BRC: What are you working on now, and when can readers expect to see it?
JF: I can't say very much at this point. But
it's another thriller set in a high-tech company, like PARANOIA, a very cool company.
It's probably going to be set in Boston --- the first time I'll have an entire
novel set in the city in which I live. The protagonist is younger than Nick Conover
but older than Adam. And so far I'm liking it a lot.
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INTERVIEW
  January 16, 2004
In this interview with Bookreporter.com's Suspense/Thriller Author Spotlight team (Carol Fitzgerald, Joe Hartlaub, and Wiley Saichek) Joseph Finder talks about writing PARANOIA, including his research and how he developed the book's major plot twist. He also talks about the pre-publication buzz that surrounded the novel and reveals certain details concerning its conclusion --- so be sure to pay attention to our spoiler alert midway through this interview!
BRC: There are interesting similarities in the dynamics within --- and between --- nations and those we see in corporations. Did you find it to be a major jump to write PARANOIA, a novel about corporate espionage, after writing THE MOSCOW CLUB and EXTRAORDINARY POWERS, which were more concerned with international relations?
JF: In some ways, no, it wasn't a major leap. They're all spy novels, in a sense. I mean, even though PARANOIA is much more mainstream fiction (a thriller that happens to be set in a corporation), its suspense underpinnings --- recruiting a "mole," training him and placing him in the target, etc. --- come from classic Cold War suspense fiction a la John le Carre. So there are real similarities. I think of PARANOIA as an updating of the classic spy novel, a freshening up.
BRC: One of the trademarks of your novels is your ability to present complex plots in an understandable manner. There are a lot of twists and turns, but you drop enough literary breadcrumbs to ensure that your reader never gets lost. Do you find, when you're writing a novel, that you have to occasionally rein in the plot, or do you know exactly where you're going at all times?
JF: Most of the time I have the macro-plot figured out in advance --- if I didn't, I'd definitely get lost. But often, as I'm writing, another idea will occur to me. I'll decide a character will in fact do something else, say something else, act differently --- and then I have to sort of rework the rest of that subplot. That said, I will say that by far the biggest plot twist in PARANOIA --- and if you've read the book, you know what I'm talking about --- was not something I came up with until I was almost halfway into the story. Suddenly I knew how the book had to resolve itself. It blew me away. I knew it was the only way to end the story. And I think the reason that virtually no readers I know, not even the most jaded and experienced readers of thrillers, can see the end coming is because I didn't see it coming either until I was quite a ways into the book. Call it serendipity.
BRC: We often joke that one can get "lost" in a meeting with tech people as they speak in their own corporate jargon. It's like a secret handshake or code. Were you ever "lost" when you sat in on meetings during your research? What do you think this kind of language brings to a group?
JF: Are you kidding? The first few days I spent researching PARANOIA, hanging out at Cisco Systems in San Jose, California, I didn't understand half of what people were saying. It was like Urdu, or Serbo-Croatian. People were using words like "pushback" and "escalation" and "bandwidth," and finally I started interrupting them and saying, "OK, can you please speak English here? Can you explain what you're talking about?" The thing is, cops talk in their own code language, and so do doctors and lawyers. All the professions, in fact. I think this "biz-buzz" is useful as shorthand in the corporate world, and in some ways it probably makes businesspeople feel like professionals, but it also (as George Orwell pointed out about political jargon) leads to lazy thinking.
BRC: We know you did a lot of research in the tech world before you wrote PARANOIA. Did your perceptions of this industry change writing this book? Do you consider yourself a tech geek? Do you own the prerequisite tech toys --- Tivo, iPod, Blackberry, Palm? Do you have a favorite gadget?
JF: Oh, I love technology, and doing research into this world made me even worse. I was actually at Apple, doing research for PARANOIA, while they were developing the iPod -- I knew something big was going on. As soon as the iPod came out, I bought one. I love the Apple iTunes store. I've got a Palm, of course, too, and a cell phone. (A friend of mine calls this GAS -- Gear Acquisition Syndrome.) The only reason I don't have a Tivo is that I'm afraid it'll be like cigarettes --- it'll just get me addicted to television, which I can't afford: I've got a book due soon! I guess one of my favorite "gadgets," if you can call it that, is my PowerBook, because I can use it to watch DVDs while I'm traveling, do my e-mail, and write anywhere. My other favorite gadget is my Bose noise-canceling headphones --- expensive, but it turns a coach flight into first-class, so it's worth the investment: a cheap upgrade.
And my perceptions of the industry did change while I was researching the book. I really loved spending time at places like Apple or Cisco --- they're really high-energy, creative, cool companies. When I started doing my research, I expected to find the corporate world a forbidding, paranoia-inducing place. In fact, I found it enormously appealing, and that changed the entire storyline. I realized that Adam, my protagonist, had to fall in love with his new workplace, Trion --- to discover a new home there.
BRC: You typically write alone, but were there any moments during your research where you thought that it might be fun to be part of the corporate world?
JF: Definitely. Writing is lonely, as any writer will tell you. Working in the corporate world struck me as being extremely social and interactive, quite appealing. Thing is, I like being my own boss.
BRC: It seems like you had fun writing Adam's character. Is he more like you or your alter ego?
JF: Maybe alter-ego. He's certainly not me. I'm older, more staid, nowhere near as slick or gifted at winning people over. (But that's the great thing about fiction -- living vicariously through your characters.) We do listen to similar music, though.
BRC: In addition to a great leading character, you did a terrific job of fleshing out your "secondary" characters in PARANOIA. Which of these characters is your favorite? Why? Do you know from the start how large a role a secondary character will play, or do your secondary characters surprise you as you're writing?
JF: Thanks! I loved the characters in this book more than in any other book I've written before. It's hard to choose among them. I love Noah Mordden, the cynical, dark, scary intellectual. I love Judith, the corporate coach, and I love Norah, Adam's killer boss. I really enjoyed writing Wyatt, the loathsome, profane CEO of Wyatt Telecom. But my favorite was Jock Goddard. I guess the secondary characters are the only ones that I allow to violate my I'm-in-control-here policy. That is, if a secondary character really starts to take off, I give him or her more screen time, as it were.
BRC: The ending of PARANOIA was ambiguous enough to keep the reader guessing, and wondering, long after the book is done. We have to ask: What does Adam do? And will we ever see him again?
SPOILER ALERT! Don't read this if you haven't read the book --- and plan to!
JF: The question is, does he get in the car or not? I leave that to the reader. But my feeling is, if at the age of 26 he doesn't have the courage to keep on walking, then he hasn't learned anything --- and I think he has. He doesn't have a family to support --- I say he keeps on walking. Will we see Adam again? I have no plans. He's been through such an arduous time, I think the guy needs a serious break.
BRC: Have any of your contacts who helped with the research for PARANOIA read the book? If so, what were their reactions?
JF: Yes, several, including the CFO of one of America's largest high-tech companies --- and he loved it. They've all liked the book a lot, which is nice to hear.
BRC: What was the most fascinating or surprising fact you learned while researching/writing PARANOIA?
JF: Hmm. Tough one. I'd say it was the degree to which there's no privacy in the corporation --- all your e-mail is archived somewhere, often screened, all of your web browsing is monitored, even your telephone can legally be tapped.
BRC: PARANOIA has gotten some terrific pre-publication buzz from reviewers, booksellers and readers. You have been published 4 times already. What do you think is making PARANOIA so special?
JF: When I sat down to write PARANOIA, I was determined to write a book that was unlike anything I'd ever read before --- a book I wanted to read. I wanted to create something that was both smart and suspenseful, that had real emotional stakes and depth, and that was told in a totally colloquial, accessible way. I wanted to jettison as many clichés as I could, defeat as many expectations as possible. I didn't want to write something that could be marketed as "another Grisham" or "another Clancy" -- I wanted to write something that would be just pure and simple a Joe Finder book -- my own voice, my own thing. I don't know how well I succeeded in that, but that was my intention. And it seems to me that some advance readers are responding to the book's uniqueness, maybe freshness. At least, that's what I hope.
BRC: While we are on the subject of PARANOIA's buzz and publication, please share with us the emotions you go through, as an author, whenever a new book hits the shelves.
JF: It's agony. I hate publication. It's funny --- I love the writing --- it's why I do it. But having the book appear in public --- which is the point, after all, and if it didn't happen I'd be awfully bummed --- is a huge anxiety to me. That said, it's also kind of exciting at the same time. Sort of like a great rollercoaster ride.
BRC: Your novel HIGH CRIMES was adapted into an extremely successful film, which is still frequently televised. How much involvement, if any, did you have with the film adaptation? Were you happy with it? Is there anything that you might have done differently?
JF: I liked it a lot. I'm not one of those writers who complain about the movies that have been made from their books --- my feeling is, no one put a gun to my head and forced me to sell it to Hollywood. I thought the director, Carl Franklin, is immensely talented and did a wonderful job. I loved Ashley Judd and Morgan Freeman. I had nothing to do with the adaptation --- they didn't ask me, which was just as well.
BRC: Do you have any thoughts concerning who you would cast for the roles in a film version of PARANOIA?
JF: Now, that's the big parlor game my friends and I enjoy playing --- a game, because I have no power over who they'll cast, assuming the movie gets made. I'd love to see Matt Damon as Adam, but Colin Farrell could do it well too. It'll require an actor who can be charming and personable but also a bit slick. I see Alana being played by Jennifer Connelly. Wyatt could be Alec Baldwin --- man, he'd be a great Wyatt. Goddard is a crucial role; he could be played by Robert Duvall or Anthony Hopkins.
BRC: What are you working on now and when can we expect to see it?
JF: Another novel, also set in the corporate world, and it'll be out next year around the same time --- if I don't do too many more interviews.
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AUTHOR TALK
January 2004
In this interview Joseph Finder, author of PARANOIA, shares with readers background on the research that he did in the world of corporate espionage, what he wants readers to experience from their reading and how he wanted this novel "to move like a hot knife through butter."
Q: PARANOIA is about corporate espionage, a subject that not many people know about. Why did you decide to write about it and how much of what readers read in your book is true?
JF: PARANOIA is at the heart of it a spy story, updated and transferred to a different location. In other words, I took the old idea of the Cold War spy novel and transferred that to an arena where it hadn't been done before --- that is, the corporation. Corporate espionage is something you hear about more and more and it's actually very frequent. It seemed to me a really intriguing way of updating the classic old story of the spy novel.
Corporate espionage is far more prevalent than most people suspect. Some of the nation's biggest corporations --- from Procter & Gamble to Microsoft --- employ corporate intelligence agents to spy on their competitors.
Q: PARANOIA delves deep into the world of corporate espionage, specifically the world of computer chips and wireless technology. What motivates the corporate world to spy on itself?
JF: Fear. Fear that a competitor's going to gain an advantage, steal a secret. Corporate espionage is amazingly widespread, but you rarely hear much about it. That's because most corporations would rather keep it a secret, preferring to do damage control on the sly and not let the public know ---which might shake investor confidence. Even more alarming, though, is the degree to which many corporations spy on their own employees. People who work for big companies often aren't aware of this. All of their e-mail can be read, and often it is filtered or screened for key words. Internet use is almost always monitored. There are records of all telephone calls you make. I'm not saying that every corporation is Big Brother --- far from it --- but believe me, when you go to work for a corporation, you basically sign away a lot of your privacy. You're using their computers, their servers, their telephones . . .
Q: How did you decide on making the change from writing international thrillers to this?
JF: I wanted to tell a story that was about real people, not superheroes or spies or serial murderers or professional terrorists but real human beings. Something like eighty percent of Americans work in corporations or have real jobs in the sort of company I was talking about in PARANOIA. A lot of thrillers take you to a place you've never gone before but I wanted to take you to a place you have been but show it to you differently.
Q: Do you see the corporate environment as something positive or something negative?
JF: I think I started out writing the book with the idea of showing a really ominous corporate setting but the more I traveled around and went to these places the more appealing I found the companies to be, and I began to understand really why they are second-homes for a lot of the people who work there. They're very family-like, very fraternal and they provide for a lot of social needs.
I wanted to show the dark side as well as the brighter side of corporate life but because this is a thriller and because this is my kind of thriller, nothing is as it seems and everything has to turn on its head through the course of the story. I didn't want anyone to be able to see this one through, to be able to see how it was going to progress or end.
Q: How much time did you spend researching the book? Did you talk to people at these companies? Did you let them know who you were or did you pretend to be one of them?
JF: I spent months going through various different companies. Everyone knew what I was doing but a lot of people couldn't figure out why I was there. They would ask me 'why do you want to write a novel about this place? This can't be interesting.'
It required going to places I had never been before like Apple Computer, Cisco and Hewlett Packard and seeing how people live their lives, what their daily work life is like so I could make it feel as real as possible in the novel.
Q: What did you learn from talking to people at these corporations?
JF: What I found is the more you talk to people the more you realize how much their lives are invested in the place they work. It really is very central to their lives and it is very interesting to them --- the colleagues, the politics, and the gossip is really central and in a lot of ways it's sort of like high school except that you get a paycheck.
Q: What will readers experience in this book?
JF:There's an element of satire in what I'm doing but there's also an element of fantasy. 'What if you could start a job and were so well prepped that you avoid all the obstacles and rocket to the top? What if then you were so successful you become rich and gain success in the eyes of all of your colleagues? What would that feel like if you knew that you were secretly prepped for this and haven't really achieved all of this on your own? Am I a fraud, did I accomplish this on my own or was I sort of placed on third base?'
Q: Is the keyghost used in the book real?
JF: The spy technology in this book is all real. The keyghost does exist, it's illegal but you can go on the Internet and find it for quite cheap.
Q: In general, do you find people at corporations are happy with their lives or unhappy with them?
JF: What I found out is that a lot of people who start out at corporations tend to be a little wary or alienated and as time goes on they become more acclimated and more used to things. Their lives become more centered on the company and as they get older they have a family and they become more and more dependent on the company. People tend not to make waves but I also found that people that have been there a long time tend to become very cynical. Overall, I found the environment to be appealing because I liked the camaraderie and the fraternal aspect of it. For the most part I don't have a negative view of corporations, I just think that I have a cynical view of them based on my knowledge of what is possible, what can happen if you're not careful.
Q: Do companies have skunkworks and is the technology at Trion based on a real skunkworks?
JF: Many companies have skunkworks, which are sort of secret projects that are sealed off, compartmented off from the rest of the company. Often it's a new product. I was at Apple Computer while they were developing the iPod. I would walk down a corridor and see the glass windows of each office papered over and no one I asked knew what was going on inside. The secret skunkworks in Trion is based on a real technology that's in the works that if the technological problems were solved, would transform technology as we know it immensely.
Q: Do you belong to any spy organizations?
I do belong to the Association of Former Intelligence Officers which I guess makes a lot of people think that I am a former intelligence officer. But no, I am not a former intelligence officer. They let a lot of ringers in and some people like me who write a lot about the business.
Q: You never make clear in the book where we are. Why is that?
JF: I wanted the story to feel like it could take place anywhere. I didn't want it to feel like it could only happen in the Silicon Valley. This is a story I visualize in a lot of ways as taking place in Massachusetts; it could take place in Connecticut, New York, Seattle. I wanted readers to be able to plug into it and identify with it geographically no matter where they were around the country and not feel that this is one particular locale. For the purpose of the story that's not necessary. The only locale that really counts is the corporation and that I describe in great detail.
Q: How did you develop Adam's voice? Where did he come from?
JF: When stories are told in the first person, the voice is often too smart, too knowledgeable or too thoughtful because the author wants to get in all kinds of reflections that the first person narrator might not believably have. I wanted Adam's voice to be the key character in the book and as part of the characterization, I wanted us to sort of just get who he was, this twenty-six year old slacker with an arrogant attitude who's sort of cool but gets slapped around by life, and we see his voice transform as he does. Having a real voice doesn't detract from the suspense; if anything I think it makes it feel more real. I wanted to make the book feel more grounded in the real world, with real references to real life, real names of bands, real names of clothes, rap artists, food, whatever it is. I wanted to make sure that even though we were sort of in a generic location everything also felt really specific.
I was aware that I wanted the reader to see this company from fresh eyes, from the eyes of someone who is on his first day of school, so everything seems fresh and weird. So it was important in a sense that Adam be a fish out of water thrown into this setting he's not accustomed to partly because it's more suspenseful that way and partly because it's a more interesting way of experiencing things.
Q: You captured exactly the way people talk at many corporations. How did you do that?
JF: Well, I went to a lot of companies and listened with the ear of an outsider. I sort of felt like an anthropologist going to Fiji or going to Africa, it was completely an alien situation. I remember the first time I visited Cisco, someone talked about "escalating" and I thought 'Hey, I've never heard that word before'. I learned that it means going above someone's head or your immediate boss' head to get something done. Likewise, they use the term "pushback" to describe resistance to something. So I realized that there is a whole vocabulary, a whole way that people talk and I started taking notes and would constantly ask people what things meant.
Q: PARANOIA is so fast paced and yet there is so much information. How do you pack in so much research and keep it so fast paced?
JF: I wanted to make this novel move like a hot knife through butter, so what I did was distill and distill and distill as much as possible. A lot of that comes from the writing and the re-writing, so there is a lot of information in the background that we don't need to be told. It's not like a Tom Clancy novel where all of the information is given to you. Instead, I wanted information or technology to be explained only to the degree that we need to know it.
Q: Will there be a movie based on the novel?
JF: The rights were sold to a producer named Lorenzo di Bonaventura who has a deal at Paramount. He is the guy who produced The Matrix, Harry Potter, and several of the Grisham movies, and he is known in Hollywood for getting things done in a quality way. I think a lot of people in Hollywood, which in a lot of ways is a viper's nest, really connected to that vicious corporate politicking that is so central in PARANOIA.
© Copyright 2004, Joseph Finder. All rights reserved. May not be reprinted without permission.
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