The Oligarch's Daughter

by Joseph Finder ★★☆☆☆

When we meet Paul Brightman, he's been hiding out in a small New Hampshire town for five years, making his living as an under-the-radar boat builder and using an assumed name. It seems he's clear of the entanglement he found himself in with a powerful Russian family, until one day an assassin shows up, calling Paul by name he hasn't used in five years. Paul narrowly escapes and flees through the New Hampshire woods, with both Russian muscle and the FBI in hot pursuit.

The novel alternates sections, between Paul on the run and flashbacks to the events that led Paul to his off-the-grid life: his chance encounter with a young Russian-American woman, with whom he soon falls in love; his job on Wall Street, which soon turns into a job for his father-in-law, Arkady Galkin; and the questionable business dealings Paul is asked to undertake on behalf of Galkin, that lead him to eventually fear for his life.

Based on the description, I was excited to read this one. It felt like a great vacation novel: not too much I needed to think about, an action-driven plot, and a good amount of suspense. It had many of those things, but it suffered from pretty poor execution. The writing was almost always a staccato, machine-gun burst of basic facts. I'll give you an example:

"He resumed walking through the dense woods until he came to a broad mountain stream. The water was flowing quickly, which meant it was safe to drink. He filled his water bottle and took a drink, then filled the bottle up again. Now he had to cross the stream. He looked for rocks to step onto to avoid the water, but there were few. He was forced to wade through the stream, which got his leather boots wet and cold."

It's...fine, but it just felt amateurish compared to some of the more evolved thrillers that I have read, and not something I expected from an author with over 15 published novels to his name.

More challenging were the gaping plot holes throughout the novel. Whether it's unlikely spycraft that Paul employs to clumsily snoop on Galkin and his businesses, or his ability to avoid detection over a lengthy series of events, there were plenty of eye-roll moments for me during this one. The macro-level plot is not ill-conceived, but the path from start to finish didn't work well. Combining that with some pretty clunky prose, and there was not much great about this novel.

There are far better thrillers out there—pass on this one.