From the New York Times bestselling author of House on Fire, a breakneck thriller that marries the dynastic opulence of Succession with the tense and disorienting spycraft of The Americans.
Intrigued? Well read on to discover the synopsis and an excerpt from Joseph Finder’s The Oligarch’s Daughter, which is out January 28th 2025.
Paul Brightman is a man on the run, living under an assumed name in a small New England town with a million-dollar bounty on his head. When his security is breached, Paul is forced to flee into the New Hampshire wilderness to evade Russian operatives who can seemingly predict his every move.
Six years ago, Paul was a rising star on Wall Street who fell in love with a beautiful photographer named Tatyana—unaware that her father was a Russian oligarch and the object of considerable interest from several U.S. intelligence agencies. Now, to save his own life, Paul must unravel a decades-old conspiracy that extends to the highest reaches of the government.
Rivaling the classic spy novels of the Cold War, The Oligarch’s Daughter is built for the frightening world we live in now.
Until that day, Grant had never killed anyone. He had thought about it before, of course, the way you imagine the worst thing you could do if you had to. You rehearse it in your dreams, in your unconscious. Inwardly, you debate.
How far would I go?
Grant’s girlfriend was helping him cook dinner, the night before it happened. She was Sarah Harrison. She taught first grade in the town’s elementary school and was sweet and gentle with a core of steel. He’d been attracted to her since the first time he met her, at the Starlite Diner five years ago. But there remained a distance between the two of them. Entirely his fault. He cared about her, but there was too much he couldn’t tell her about himself.
Sarah was making a salad while he kept watch on a chicken roasting in the oven. The kitchen of the old farmhouse was big and comfortable and cluttered—red-and-white linoleum floor, a tin-topped dining table, wood-paneled walls. He’d restored the house himself, mostly, doing the carpentry in his boat shop. The whole kitchen smelled of roasting garlic, an aroma Grant loved.
As she chopped, Sarah told him about her day. “This girl threw up on the stairs during dismissal, and I sent her out to her mom,” she said. “The mom was so pissed off she called the school to complain that her daughter had vomit on her shirt. ‘Why didn’t you clean her up before sending her out?’ she said. So I get yelled at, and meanwhile, I had to clean up this giant pile of barf.” Sarah was tall and slim and had shoulder-length chestnut-brown hair and cognac-brown eyes, and she was wearing her old UNH sweats, maroon with fraying cuffs. (It was a chilly evening.)
Grant tried not to laugh, but then she did, a rueful laugh, which made it okay.
“How was your week?” Sarah said. “Tim still refusing to pay you a deposit?” A local fisherman named Tim Ogilvy had brought in a bare-hull fiberglass boat for Grant to finish out but refused to pay until the work was done.
“Today I told him either he gives me a couple hundred bucks for materials or I’ll put his boat in the yard and chain her to a tree.”
“What’d he do?”
“He paid.” “Didn’t that piss you off? That you had to do that?”
Grant shrugged. “There’s that shrug. Was that too feel-y a question?” she asked.
That was when his phone rang.
Later, he would wish he’d never answered the call.
Right at seven thirty a stout man appeared at the boat wearing a navy windbreaker and jeans and expensive-looking sneakers. He was balding, with curly black hair at the sides, and wore steel aviator-framed sunglasses. He had the air of an athlete gone to seed, soft around the middle but stocky, thick-limbed in ways that could be muscle as much as flab. He looked to be in his forties, and with his pasty complexion, he didn’t look much like a sportsman.
“You’re not Captain Lyle,” the man said.
“My name is Grant Anderson,” Grant said, “and I’m filling in for Captain Lyle, who’s sick today.”
“All right, Captain Grant,” the man said. “My name is Frederick Newman.” He had a little tic, the cheek below his left eye twitching every so often. He was studying his phone.
“We’re waiting for your wife, is that right?” Grant said.
“No, my wife is not coming,” said Newman. “She’s under the weather. She won’t be fishing with us this morning.” He had the barest hint of an accent, which Grant couldn’t quite place, but it made him nervous.
“So it’s just you?”
“Right.” Newman’s cheek twitched, and he resumed studying his phone. “I’m good to go, Captain Grant.”
Newman was studying him. “You know, you look familiar,” he said, setting the speargun down on the deck. “You always had a beard?”
“Oh, yeah,” Grant said, attempting to sound casual, but his heart was drumming. “Long before it was cool.” He was pretty sure now that Newman’s very slight accent was Slavic. An eel of unease squirmed in Grant’s belly. It had been years since he’d heard a Russian accent. Newman’s fluent English had the flat American a’s of an émigré who’d spent most of his adolescence in the United States. Probably came to the U.S. as a teenager.
Frederick Newman shook his head. He was speaking to Grant in a low voice, but Grant could barely hear him over the thrum and whine of the Suzanne B’s engine.
“Excuse me?” Grant said.
Newman raised his voice. “You must have known this day would come, Paul,” he said calmly.
Grant’s stomach caved in on itself. He was looking at Newman’s face, at the eyes behind those aviators. They were intent, alert, almost the eyes of someone playing a video game, neither cruel nor kind. Grant expected that tic to return, but Newman’s face was absolutely placid.
“I’m afraid you’ve got the wrong person, Mr. Newman. I’m Grant Anderson.”
“You know, Paul, everyone dies one day. With me, it’s different. Clean, quick, no suffering.”
