After losing his job and being kicked out by his ex-fiancée, Rick Hoffman is forced to sleep on the couch in his dilapidated childhood home. When he decides to fix up the house so it will finally sell, he discovers a giant stash of cash hidden in the walls. Unable to communicate after a devastating stroke, his father can't explain the funds, so Rick must channel the dogged journalist he once was and investigate. His probe turns dangerous as he uncovers a web of cash banks, payoffs, and enigmatic Boston bigwigs and their hired muscle. Rick is repeatedly threatened and beaten but remains determined to learn the truth about his father's past. In the end, it all comes down to a tragic accident, widespread corruption, and a man trying to do the right thing. VERDICT Rick's initial reckless spending and some questionable decision making don't make him especially likable, but his extreme persistence will win over readers as he wises up and acknowledges his short-comings. Details about Boston and the Big Dig (a megahighway project) enhance the setting of Finder's latest nonstop page-turner that is sure to be popular with his fans and thriller aficionados. Try as a read-alike for Matthew Quirk. [See Prepub Alert, 12/15/14.]-Emily Byers, Tillamook Cty. Lib., OR © Copyright 2015. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

A struggling writer finds $3.4 million in cash in a crawl space in his old house, leading him to discover the truth about his stroke-ridden father. Since Rick Hoffman lost his lucrative job with a slick city magazine, things have gotten so bad that he's camping out in his family's disheveled, heat-deprived home in Cambridge. His father, Leonard, a former lawyer, is in a nursing home, unable to speak or communicate. An ace investigative reporter for the Boston Globe before he was hired by the Back Bay to write about rich people, Rick begins nosing around to find out where the money came from. In no time at all, he suffers his first beating from bad guys who warn him to back off. Living large, he hides out in hotel rooms while investigating his father's past. Leonard, it turns out, is a man of many secrets. He was a bagman for strip clubs and porn clubs. He was also an activist pro bono lawyer for civil liberties causes. Digging through city records and interviewing former connections of his father's, Rick uncovers a coverup of major proportionsand more surprises. As in his previous novel, Suspicion (2014), Finder gives us a character who acts stupidly to pull himself out of bad circumstances. But neither the lack of credibility nor Rick's thinness as a character keeps the book from being a fun read. Finder returns with another thriller that will have you shaking your head over the protagonist's actions but still turning the pages to find out what happens next. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

*Starred Review* Finder can make reading about someone walking across a room excruciatingly suspenseful. In this, the tenth of Finder's stand-alone thrillers, decay is the predominant theme. Rick Hoffman is haunted by the fact that his original values have been lost. He started out as an investigative journalist, and did well at it until he was seduced by money into working for Back Bay, a glitzy Boston monthly. Now he's out of work, his job eliminated; his girlfriend no longer interested; his apartment no longer affordable. He has no choice but to move back into his childhood home, which is falling apart and empty. In trying to find out what creatures are scrabbling around inside the walls, Rick discovers a stack of money running into millions. He races to get the money out of the house (a somewhat sketchy neighbor was with him when he made the discovery) and into a safe place. But other people are right behind him. Rick's challenge is to stay one step ahead of his pursuers while figuring out the backstory on the money. He uses his investigative-journalism background in intriguing and totally believable ways, but the bad guys seem to be just as intelligent. This is a thriller that is as much about redemption as it is about escape. A remarkable, exciting read.--Fletcher, Connie Copyright 2015 Booklist

IN THE POST-"GONE GIRL" thriller era, you've got to move your domestic malice along with zip, vigor and a sharp eye for The Way We Live Now. So it serves Joseph Finder well that his new suspense novel includes tartly informed themes about adult children caring for elderly parents, and the state of print journalism. His protagonist, Rick Hoffman, has abandoned his career as an investigative reporter at a newspaper and now writes puff pieces for a Boston-based city magazine, one of those glossies that stay fat with ads supplementing their fawning-over-the-wealthy editorial content. But at the start of "The Fixer," Rick is laid off from that job - poor guy, he can't even sell out successfully. He decides to move into his father's old house, and while doing some renovation discovers over $3 million in cash in the building's crawl space. His father, left speechless after a stroke and consigned to a nursing home, is unable to tell Rick where the money came from, and Rick, who needs the dough, spends some but hides the rest while searching for the truth of its origin. And then unsavory people come looking for Rick and the money. It's a nifty little setup, and Finder makes the most of it. For much of his career, Finder specialized in suspense novels set in the world of high finance; he also developed a series character, Nick Heller - Finder's so-called private spy. But starting with the crisp "Suspicion" in 2014, Finder moved into different territory: the "ordinary suburban guy in jeopardy" thriller. It's an area that's been worked over best in recent years by writers like Harlan Coben, Linwood Barclay and the underrated Australian author Michael Robotham. Finder has quickly found his own niche in this field. His middle-class men of quiet desperation are hemmed in by a bad economy and family responsibilities that prevent them from sustaining idealistic career goals. Rick despises himself every time a magazine editor asks him to give a subject "the full Rick Hoffman treatment," which means squandering his writing talent to compose overripe praise for a wealthy interviewee. He's relieved, therefore, when he can oil up his rusty reportorial skills to investigate his father's past, to find the source of his crawl-space windfall. Turns out Dad was once a firebrand attorney whose clients included members of the Black Panthers and the Weather Underground, but who also funded his crusade with laundered money from illegal sources. Rick's father was, in short, the "fixer" of the novel's title, a go-between who was rewarded with the wads of cash Rick found in his father's house. Finder does a good job of keeping us as surprised as Rick is as he discovers each new detail of the past, and takes care to place our hero in danger for knowing too much. He is briefly abducted by a mostly unseen attacker - the only identifying glimpse Rick gets is of the man's clover-leaf tattoo: "On each leaf was the number 6, making it 666. The number of the Anti-christ." I was relieved that this multilayered approach to symbolism didn't reveal a satanic leprechaun as the villain. The author is, thankfully, more of a hard-boiled realist. If you're just discovering Finder's work, I'd recommend you start with the more twisty "Suspicion." But if you're in the mood for tense, witty angst about closed-down career opportunities and dirty money cleansed by family redemption, "The Fixer" is the way to go. KEN TUCKER is critic at large for Yahoo TV and a critic for NPR's "Fresh Air."

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