The Oligarch’s Daughter is the first thing I’ve read by Joseph Finder and it immediately made me realize that I need to start rectifying my mistake by reading up on all that he has written. The sheer suspense and unpredictability of the plot with an espionage aura that took me back to the days of Red Sparrow.
Paul Brightman is a man on the run. He’s hiding under a fake name and he makes a life for himself in isolation until his past catches up to him when Russian operatives get on his trail and force him to go on the run again, for the last time. As Paul tries to hide and evade his pursuers, we find out more about his past life as a rising star in Wall Street where he falls in love with a woman whose father is a Russian oligarch under the keen eyes of US Intelligence agencies. The more he finds out about the world running parallel to ours, the dire his consequences. Ultimately, it’s down to him to expose a decades-long conspiracy if he has any chance of saving himself.
Finder packs a multitude of genres in this narrative, as the book starts off with a dash of thriller and action before it shifts gears into a romantic and financial drama and then it kicks up in high gear as a suspenseful thriller where something’s just lurking under the surface and the protagonist is drawn to discovering it, not clearly knowing it may be upend his life. It’s these shifting lines that make this book so exciting and intriguing because you’re not able to predict when the winds will change, but you do know that once they do, it’s going to be a huge leap.
Once the narrative shifts into the corporate espionage and thriller transmission, it’s one unsettling revelation after another and all you can do is keep your eyes on the pages as the protagonist’s life spirals with captivating precision and supremely high engagement.
The Oligarch’s Daughter is one of the stories where the more oblivious you are to the plot going in, the more satisfying the payoff. It thrives on suspense and thrills by interspersing these elements in between seemingly mundane and domestic drama elements and the frequent peaks and troughs work to keep events and dialogue refreshing.
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