The Assemblagist

Received my fresh off the press copy of Van­ished, Joe’s lat­est novel, on Sat­ur­day. I’ve put aside Tues­day after­noon as my offi­cial read­ing time. Today is punc­tu­ated by Roxanne’s sched­uled les­son at Top Dog Acad­emy. Most of the day’s periph­ery revolves around pur­chas­ing a 6′ leash/​lead and other dog-​related activ­i­ties, includ­ing clean­ing out her swim­ming pool and giv­ing the two Jack boys a bath.

Back to Finder. I looked for Joseph Finder on Ama­zon and found some inter­est­ing information –

I was born in Chicago and spent much of my early child­hood in Afghanistan and the Philip­pines. I later moved with my fam­ily to Belling­ham, Wash­ing­ton and then to Albany, New York, where I attended high school.

I majored in Russ­ian stud­ies at Yale, where I also sang with the Whif­f­en­poofs. In 1984, I received a master’s degree from the Har­vard Russ­ian Research Cen­ter, and later taught on the Har­vard fac­ulty. My first book, Red Car­pet: The Con­nec­tion Between the Krem­lin and America’s Most Pow­er­ful Busi­ness­men, was a non-​fiction expose about multi-​millionaire Dr. Armand Hammer’s ties to Soviet intel­li­gence. Though Ham­mer threat­ened a libel suit, the fall of the Soviet Union opened archives that ver­i­fied the truth of my account.

I can’t wait to dig into Van­ished and will report on its (hope­fully) thrilling good­ness later on this week. Finder’s nov­els have their own spe­cial shelf in our library. Gal­ley proofs, end prod­ucts… all.

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