The finder rolled his head to one side, considered this young woman who, by any rights, would eventually have to be killed. It was the only way to ensure silence. Something unfamiliar was tapping on the window. Tenderness? Mercy? Or was it just Irish sentimentality? Whatever it was, it flickered and died, a ghost of a breath on the glass.
The Finder is filled with many interesting vignettes, amusing dialogue, and a range of exotic locales – all brought to breathing life. And the overall plot – that there's a shadowy figure out there collecting forgotten items (Buddy Holly’s horn-rimmed glasses, Muhammad Ali’s Olympic gold medal, Alfred Hitchcock's first film) and presumably retrieving these items on demand and leaving mayhem in his wake – makes for a mystery full of uncertainty and tension. But despite all these good parts, the whole just didn't add up for me – and especially since none of the many story threads ended credibly for me. I will say that the mystery kept me totally engaged (mostly because I couldn't figure out what was supposed to be going on behind the scenes), and I did enjoy the small, evocative bits, but when I finished The Finder, all I could say was, “That's it?” (Note: I read an ARC through NetGalley and passages quoted may not be in their final forms.)
And with that, the investigation was no longer his. Police Inspector Shimada, senior officer, Hateruma Island Substation, wheeled his bicycle onto the tarmac, climbed astride with a wobbled lack of grace, and pedaled back to his village to await further instructions, back to a life of lost and found, of sugarcane wives and messy kitchens, of bamboo and bitter melons, where widows smile through their pain and the tables are never turned.
Although this is widely known about author Will Ferguson, he reminds us in an afterword that he is a travel writer, as well as a novelist, and he has personally visited and written about each of the locations he sets The Finder in: from the opening in Hateruma (the last habitable island in the Japanese archipelago), to Australia and New Zealand, Northern Ireland and Rwanda, Ferguson's journalistic eye brings each setting to vivid life (each a Land of Contrasts!) To link a narrative between all of these places, Ferguson tells a story that mostly pivots between The Finder, an Interpol agent who is obsessed with tracking him down, and an aging travel writer who always seems to be in the wrong place at the right time. The various bits were of uneven interest to me (I loved the opening in Japan and was disappointed when that part ended), and again, it didn't gel together for me in the end.
Make no mistake, there is a body count associated with these objects. A record dealer in Memphis tried to get cute with an early recording of Hound Dog. He ended up floating face down in a hotel pool. A stamp collector in Madrid was turned inside out over a forged One-Cent Magenta. An antiquities dealer we spoke with in Vatican City later had his tongue cut out. This isn't a treasure hunt. This is a dark river. Massive criminal interests are involved, millions of undeclared dollars are moving across international borders with impunity. It's not fun and games, it's not hide-and-seek, it's not cat-and-mouse. This is hyena loose among the wildebeest.
This really should have been more exciting than it was – the danger was explained but just not palpable – yet Ferguson put in so many well-written lines and conversations and vivid settings that I'm not overall disappointed. (And it is a bonus that Ferguson adds a reading list in his afterword for those interested in the real-life inspirations for some of his characters.)
