Joseph Finder, The Oligarch’s Daughter

First, thank you for taking the time to interview and share more about your work with my readers—especially this new release, offering a new protagonist: Paul Brightman.

 Why were you ready to bring readers a new protagonist, and what appealed to you about Paul Brightman?
The books I write tend to be about ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances. Most of my books have featured one-time protagonists, because when I put my main character through the paces of a Joe Finder thriller, it’s unfair to bring him or her back. His or her life has been turned upside down! The Nick Heller series is the exception.
In many ways, Paul is an ordinary person — but he comes from a background that is quite different from the oligarch’s, and from the background of the woman he falls in love with, Tatiana. I wanted him to be drawn to this warm, engaging family — and show the contrast between his family, which was small and cold, and this very appealing Russian family. I wanted to show that draw, that allure.

  He feels like a man with many masks. Did he come to you fully formed, or did you discover him as you wrote? Which causes me to ask—how extensive of a character work-up do you do for a novel?
I did pretty much discover Paul as I wrote. As I wrote the book, I began to figure out who he had to be in order to make the story work. He is someone who is very good at his job, and therefore very appealing to the oligarch — yet he is also a guy from a poor family, a lower-class background. He’s dazzled by this world of wealth, but also put off by it.
The only time I’ve done a complete character workup for a novel in advance was with Nick Heller, because I knew that as a series character, he’d be with me for a while. What I knew about Paul was that he had to have certain attributes, he needed to fit certain slots. The more I wrote, the more I developed the character and his background.

You have written intelligence agents and corporate insiders. Paul is a hedge fund guy turned fugitive. Why the change of background? Your experience in this field?  Or how did you decide what you’d need for research?
I wanted Paul to be doing something that would bring him into the oligarch’s orbit. I wanted to be able to show that he’s good at his job — he’s good at making money using gut instinct as well as research.
I talked to a number of young people who work in the hedge fund business, four or five people just starting their careers and assessing what makes success and what they have to avoid. I talked to them about all kinds of things — about how people dress, how people socialize, what their love life is like.

 There is a powerful emotional thread in Paul’s relationship with Tatyana. This appears to be a love story set within a thriller. Did you feel your readers were missing out on this theme—or does it come from something else?
I hadn’t really written a love story before, and I wanted to stretch, to try to do something new — and this book was only going to work if it had a plausible love story. It wasn’t that I felt readers were missing out, it was that this book required it.

  The dual timelines in the novel—present-day Paul on the run, and flashbacks to his rise and fall—are wonderfully balanced. How did you maintain such a tight tension? And, how extensive of an outline do you create before writing?
Normally I don’t work from an outline, but this time I did have to outline the timelines. It was a feat of plot engineering. Each past flashback had to connect to the present, and the only way to make sure of that was to outline it. The way to keep the readers’ attention was to maintain that close connection between the past and the present.

 Speaking of outlines: You’re known for blending high-stakes realism with cinematic pacing. Do you plan your novels like screenplays, or do they unfold more organically?
No, I don’t really think about screenplays when I’m writing my novels. If and when my novels are adapted for TV or film, the screenwriter’s going to take what I’ve written and seriously abridge it. But I do use some of the principles of screenwriting — for example, I usually bring in an “inciting incident” very early on. And I do believe that every scene has to have discernible beats. I plan maybe the first 25% of my books, and then I let the story unfold organically.

New Hampshire wilderness scenes are intense and vivid. Have you ever gone off-grid like Paul—or was this all research? Do you do the research when writing, or does it work into the outline?

Well — both! I found a couple of wilderness guides in New Hampshire, and I told them the region I wanted to set the story in, and what I wanted to do. They helped me a lot with the research. But I also went to New Hampshire in January. We went out in the cold and did a number of the things that Paul wound up doing in the book. That was all before I started writing, so my real-life experience shaped the story.

What does The Oligarch’s Daughter say about loyalty to country, to family, and to truth? Was that a central question in your mind while writing it?
It’s always interesting when readers identify themes I hadn’t been thinking about — but yes, The Oligarch’s Daughter is absolutely a story about who Tatiana is actually loyal to, and who Paul is loyal to. Is he loyal to the oligarch? To Tatiana and her family? To his country? He’s struggling between loyalty to Tatyana and loyalty to the truth. I suppose this was a central question in my mind, but I’m not sure how fully I articulated it.

Arkady Galkin is such a chilling figure. Did you model him after any real-life oligarchs—or invent him from scratch?
I modeled Arkady Galkin after an assortment of oligarchs I had read about, and also after some Russians I met in Moscow. He’s invented from scratch, but I pulled all kinds of threads from actual oligarchs.

Funny question: How do you keep ahead of the geopolitical curve in your books without falling into “predict-the-news” mode?
The funny thing is that my books sometimes have predicted real-life events before they happened — but not deliberately, because that’s risky! I write about geopolitical situations as they exist, rather than trying to predict outcomes.

 Do you ever write an ending first—or do you chase your characters to the finish line?
I usually want to know the ending before I start, but I’ll often change the ending as I write, if I think of something more exciting, more original, or more interesting.

What would you say The Oligarch’s Daughter taught you as a writer—something new about suspense, structure, or even yourself?
Writing The Oligarch’s Daughter emphasized for me the importance of delving into character, and that suspense is pretty much derived from character. I discovered how important it was to flesh out these relationships, to make sure that Tatyana and her father and Paul were all well-formed characters interacting in plausible ways, but also in interesting and unpredictable ways as well. 

Thanks, 
Whether you are a writer or a reader, knowing how a story is created is insightful.
Your comments have given my readers and me great insight into your work and into the writing of pf suspense
Can't wait for your next book!

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