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We’ve been readers of Joe Finder’s espionage thrillers at Shots Magazine for some time now, and have bumped into him many times both in America at Thrillerfest and Bouchercon Conventions but also in the UK as he’s been a guest author at Theakston’s Crime Writing Festival in Harrogate several times. In fact in 2017, Joe Finder joined our quiz team adding his weight to his fellow Journalists – sadly we came an honourable [and very close] second. Well in our defence, the winning team had a secret weapon - the writer of AppleTV+ Slow Horses Mick Herron. The creator of James Bond Antidote - Jackson Lamb who has an encyclopaedic knowledge of the crime fiction genre – though he dresses better than his creation - Jackson Lamb.

Anyway, I digress……..It’s been a while since we’ve read one of Joe’s thrillers, so both Mike Stotter and I were delighted to meet up with him during Bouchercon 2025, in New Orleans, both watching his panel as well with Gerald Petievich at Otto Penzler’s Mysterious Press anniversary party held on Bourbon Street. 

We learned that Joe’s latest bestselling novel The Oligarch’s Daughter has just been released in Paperback in the UK from his British Publishers, Head of Zeus. On return to the UK, I managed to read this extraordinary novel over two sittings [which is saying something, considering the heft of this thriller].

Here are my thoughts -

Joe Finder’s latest novel is a literary throwback to the 1970s cold war espionage-action thriller but given a high-tech upgrade to pull it into our contemporary times. Ostensibly a cat and mouse chase that traverses trade-craft, technology, time and terrain, it is greater than the sum of its parts because it makes the reader ponder on what it takes to vanish and escape ‘the grid’.

The chase commences in New England, when boat-builder Grant Anderson takes a client out on a sea fishing trip. Little is as it appears, for the client is actually a hired assassin contracted to eliminate Anderson. It is revealed that Grant Anderson is a non-de-plume for Paul Brightman, a New Yorker who vanished many years ago. It seems that Paul Brightman’s cover is blown.

Read our full review at Shots Magazine HERE

Following reading The Oligarch’s Daughter, I had a few questions for the author, and he graciously answered my queries which we present for our readers.

Ali Karim: Welcome back to Shots Magazine, it’s been a while…..

Joe Finder: I know, and it’s good to be back, Ali – thank you for having me!

AK: It was good seeing you at Bouchercon New Orleans in September, so tell us what you got up to in ‘The Big Easy’?

JF: Besides breakfasts at the Ruby Slipper café and a couple of excellent dinners, I was able to catch up with some old friends and make some new ones.  New Orleans was a great setting for the conference, and I always love Bouchercon. I love my community of mystery/thriller writers and readers.

AK: ….your long awaited novel THE OLIGARCH’S DAUGHTER has just been released in Paperback in the UK, so tell us where your fascination with Russian Political Intrigue stems from?

JF: I’ve been interested in Russia since before my college days, when I discovered the works of the Great Russian novelist and short-story writer Nikolai Gogol.  I was fascinated by a culture that could produce such a writer, and in college I majored in Russian studies, with a focus on Soviet politics and intelligence. That led to my first book, a nonfiction book about the most prominent American businessmen who had personal connections to the Kremlin . . . which in turn led to my first novel, THE MOSCOW CLUB, which centred on a coup in the Kremlin. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, I moved on to other topics in my thrillers but remained interested in Russia.  It took me a while, but I finally got back to it in THE OLIGARCH’S DAUGHTER.

AK: THE OLIGARCH’S DAUGHTER is rather prescient, when you consider the Russian special operation in Ukraine and the curious Russian financial matters internationally since the fall of the Soviet Union; so did you have any fears setting this novel with such a backdrop?

JF: I’ve written about a curious break-in at my office a few years ago that followed my criticizing Putin and the Russian secret services on live Russian TV.  After which, the FBI warned me not to visit Moscow again. So yes, I was apprehensive about writing another book that dealt with Russian matters. But I did it anyway. Though I don’t plan to be visiting Russia any time soon.

AK: When I read THE OLIGARCH’S DAUGHTER it reminded me of a Robert Ludlum international thriller, but with updated technology and faster velocity. Would you care to comment?

JF: Thanks, Ali – I take that as a compliment, because I’ve always loved Ludlum’s novels.  High literature it ain’t, but Ludlum was unparalleled in the way he created and sustained tension throughout his stories.  Ludlum – who was a friend, by the way – was also skilled at conspiracy novels, stories in which a conspiracy is gradually revealed and becomes larger in scope, involving higher and higher circles of power, in an atmosphere of growing paranoia.  I tried to do something like that with THE OLIGARCH’S DAUGHTER, and I’m delighted that you think I succeeded.

AK: ..wow friends with Robert Ludlum……and so which of Robert Ludlum’s thrillers would be favourites of yours and why?

JF: I have particular fondness for THE HOLCROFT COVENANT, which starts in a classic conspiratorial way: an American architect meets with a mysterious stranger on a train in Geneva.  He then meets his father, a man he never knew, and discovers a massive plot involving the children of Nazis. I’m also quite fond of THE MATARESE CIRCLE, in which a CIA agent and a KGB agent are forced to work together to try to defeat a far-reaching conspiracy whose origins date back more than a century.  And of course THE BOURNE IDENTITY is just a solid-gold classic that begins with an irresistible premise – a man awakes one day with amnesia, having no idea who he is.  The only clue is a piece of microfilm with the numbers of a Swiss bank account.

AK: One of my favourite Ludlum works is THE OSTERMAN WEEKEND….one of his slimmer thrillers [and as adapted for the screen, it was sadly Sam Peckinpah’s final directed film]…anyway, putting you on the spot…can you name a few thriller writers that influenced you [or impressed you] when you were young, and their most important work [in your opinion]?

JF: There are a number of thriller writers who made a deep impression on me: Eric Ambler (THE MASK [aka COFFIN] OF DIMITRIOS, JOURNEY INTO FEAR), Frederick Forsyth (THE DAY OF THE JACKAL), Ken Follett (EYE OF THE NEEDLE), John le Carré (THE SPY WHO CAME IN FROM THE COLD) are just a few of them. And when I was younger, I loved the James Bond novels by Ian Fleming.  It’s a rich genre.

AK: Back to THE OLIGARCH’S DAUGHTER, I found some of the supporting characters such as Grant Anderson / Paul Brightman’s girlfriend Sarah Harrison; his estranged father Stan, his nemesis the former CIA Asset Geraldine Dempsey among many others are interestingly delineated – can you tell us how you paint characters so distinctly in such a fast-moving plot-driven thriller without slowing the pace?

JF: It’s a funny paradox: in a fast-paced thriller it’s quite difficult to establish full-blooded characters, yet a suspense novel doesn’t work unless we care about the central characters.  These characters – particularly Paul’s father, Stan, and his nemesis, Geraldine Dempsey – came to me in the round, so to speak. They felt real to me. I think the trick is to employ brush strokes of characterization, highly specific bits of description, lines of dialogue, reactions – so that they come to life in the reader’s mind, as real as they were in the writer’s.

AK: Your work has been filmed, with amazing casting such as Morgan Freeman and Ashley Judd in High Crimes and Liam Hemsworth, Gary Oldman and Harrison Ford in Paranoia, so have you any news of film options on your other works?

JF: Yes! I recently signed a deal with a terrific producer, Carl Beverly of Timberman/Beverly (producers of Justified, Masters of Sex, Elementary, Seal Team, and Kidnapped) for a TV series based on my Nick Heller character, starting with an adaptation of my Nick Heller novel GUILTY MINDS. And I also have signed a deal for another TV series based on THE OLIGARCH’S DAUGHTER. Both deals are with excellent producers, but this being Hollywood, anything can happen . . .

AK: Are you still active with International Thriller Writers [ITW] as you were a founder, and still involved with the Association of Former Intelligence Officers?

JF: I’m very active in ITW, recruiting writers for anthologies that help underwrite ITW’s activities that assist beginning and mid-career thriller authors, and of course I always go to ThrillerFest in New York.  And although I’m less active in AFIO, the Association of Former Intelligence Officers, I remain friendly with former CIA officers (I was not one) and often call upon them to help me research my novels.

AK: And finally, what’s on the horizon for Joe Finder?

JF: I’m deep into a new book, the beginning of a new series, and as usual, it’s taken me over . . .

AK: Thank you for your time Joe.

JF: Thank you, Ali, and thanks for your enthusiasm about THE OLIGARCH’S DAUGHTER!

Shots Magazine would like to pass our thanks to Joe Finder and his British Publisher Head of Zeus for this interview.

The Oligarch’s Daughter is now released in the UK and Ireland in Paperback, and for more information on the work of Joe Finder > https://josephfinder.com/

Here’s an interesting video [below] where Joe Finder discusses The Oligarch’s Daughter with the editor of The New Yorker David Remnick.