Bio
In the 17 years since the publication of his first novel, THE MOSCOW CLUB, Joseph Finder has established himself as one of the world's best and most successful thriller writers. His most recent novel, POWER PLAY, made bestseller lists around the country, as did his three previous books, KILLER INSTINCT, COMPANY MAN, and PARANOIA. His novel HIGH CRIMES became a hit movie starring Ashley Judd and Morgan Freeman, and his novel ZERO HOUR was also purchased for Hollywood.

Joe’s background is not in literature, but in international politics. Born in Chicago, he moved around the world with his family, spending much of his early childhood in Afghanistan and the Philippines. He later moved with his family to Bellingham, Washington and then to Albany, New York where he attended high school.

Joe majored in Russian studies at Yale, where he also sang with the school's legendary a cappella group, the Whiffenpoofs (see the photo gallery for a picture of Joe with Ella Fitzgerald, before a Whiffenpoofs concert). After graduating summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa, he completed a master's degree at the Harvard Russian Research Center and later taught on the Harvard faculty.

Joe’s first book, Red Carpet: The Connection Between the Kremlin and America's Most Powerful Businessmen, was published in 1983, when Joe was only 24. This controversial expose about multi-millionaire Dr. Armand Hammer's ties to Soviet intelligence is no longer in print, due mainly to Hammer’s threats of a libel suit. The book’s assertions were confirmed after the fall of the Soviet Union, when newly-published documents verified Joe’s research.

Red Carpet was only a portion of the story that Joe wanted to tell, however – legally, he felt that the only way to tell the rest of the story was to write a novel. The result was The Moscow Club, published in 1991. Ironically, Joe found that his confidential sources were more willing to reveal classified information to him as a novelist than they were when he was working as a journalist and academic. The Moscow Club was eventually published in thirty foreign countries and became a bestseller throughout Europe.

Joe’s second novel, Extraordinary Powers (1994), about the discovery of a Soviet mole in the highest ranks of the CIA, was published just days before the unmasking of CIA mole Aldrich Ames. The Zero Hour, published in 1996, was the first novel ever written with the official cooperation of both the CIA and the FBI. The movie version of Joe’s fourth novel, High Crimes, premiered in April 2002, starring Ashley Judd and Morgan Freeman.

Paranoia, published in 2004, represented a major turning point in Joe’s career. Not only was it his most commercially and critically successful book to date, but it was also his first book to use the business world as a setting for crime fiction. Joe discussed his fascination with ambition as a subject for fiction in a piece for the New York Times Book Review in April 2006: “The craving for success has become the love that dare not speak its name… the drive to get ahead is registered, recognized and, usually, reviled: but it’s seldom owned.” Click here for full article.

Joe’s determination to own this drive has led to his being described as “the CEO of suspense.” He’s reluctant to embrace the “corporate thriller” tag, but continues to find fertile ground for suspense in the business world. COMPANY MAN, published in 2005, is set in a struggling furniture-manufacturing firm; KILLER INSTINCT looks at the cutthroat world of high-technology sales. POWER PLAY, which spent three weeks on the New York Times bestseller list in 2007, features characters who work in the aerospace industry.

In addition to his fiction, Joe does occasional work for Hollywood and has written on espionage and international affairs relations for a number of publications, including Forbes, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The New Republic. He roots for the Boston Red Sox, and lives in Boston with his wife and daughter.

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