Guilty Minds

by Joseph Finder

Overview

New York Times bestselling author Joseph Finder delivers an exhilarating and timely thriller exploring how even the most powerful among us can be brought down by a carefully crafted lie and how the secrets we keep can never truly stay buried. 
 
The chief justice of the Supreme Court is about to be defamed, his career destroyed, by a powerful gossip website that specializes in dirt on celebs and politicians. Their top reporter has written an exposé claiming that he had liaisons with an escort, a young woman prepared to tell the world her salacious tale. But the chief justice is not without allies, and his greatest supporter is determined to stop the story in its tracks.
     
Nick Heller is a private spy—an intelligence operative based in Boston, hired by lawyers, politicians, and even foreign governments. A high-powered investigator with a penchant for doing things his own way, he’s called to Washington, DC, to help out in this delicate, potentially explosive situation.
   
Nick has just forty-eight hours to disprove the story about the chief justice. But when the call girl is found murdered, the case takes a dangerous turn, and Nick resolves to find the mastermind behind the conspiracy before anyone else falls victim to the maelstrom of political scandal and ruined reputations predicated upon one long-buried secret.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780451472588
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	05/30/2017
Pages:	480
Sales rank:	204,665
Product dimensions:	4.25(w) x 7.50(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

JOSEPH FINDER is the New York Times bestselling author of twelve previous novels, including The Fixer, Suspicion, Vanished, and Buried Secrets. Finder's international bestseller Killer Instinct won the International Thriller Writers's Thriller Award for Best Novel of 2006. Other bestselling titles include Paranoia and High Crimes, which both became major motion pictures. He lives in Boston.

Read an Excerpt

Chapter 1
If you believe scientific studies, we all lie, several times a day. Can’t help ourselves. Sure, white lies are the grease that keeps the social engines running. But lies—real lies—are the source of all trouble. My job is really nothing more than figuring out who’s lying and why, and to catch them at it. That’s all there is to it.
(Continues…)

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Excerpted from "Guilty Minds"
by .
Copyright © 2017 Joseph Finder.
Excerpted by permission of Penguin Publishing Group.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Editorial Reviews

Praise for Guilty Minds

“Finder shows off his top-notch storytelling skills, moving with ease from high places to low in the nation's capital.”—Kirkus Reviews

“Finder really knows his way around a thriller, and his sensibilities about Washington, scandal, and the immediacy—and threat—of digital publishing and electronic surveillance seem chillingly plausible. This is an exciting, insightful thriller with finely sketched characters—in other words, a sure bet in public libraries.”—Booklist (starred review)

“[A] tight plot, sharp dialogue, and a cast of intriguing characters keep the story a cut above the genre pack.”—Publishers Weekly

“Finder (The Fixer) shows off his clever storytelling skills by packing action, politics, and modern detective techniques into a complicated plotline that leads to murder.”—Library Journal

“This is a dark tale of intrigue and underhanded politics…If you’re a Finder fan, this book will not disappoint you. If you’re not, you might become one after this read.”—Suspense Magazine

“Finder’s prose is lean, the pacing swift and agile, and the plot well worth gossiping about.”—Minneapolis Star Tribune

“Guilty Minds balances its thriller tenets with solid characters...razor-sharp dialogue, and a breathless plot that careens from one realistic twist to another.”—Mystery Scene Magazine

“The plot of Guilty Minds...is taut, rapid, and tensely recurving.”—Harvard Magazine

“Finder is one of the best contemporary thriller writers.”—Connecticut Post

Praise for Joseph Finder and The Fixer

“A master of the modern thriller.”—The Boston Globe

“There are many authors who take a reader 'slowly into that good night.' However, the real genius knows how to create the ultimate lead-in. They are the wordsmiths who can, in one page or one paragraph, grab the reader's attention and never let go....A true genius wordsmith, this is one author who has created solid suspense gold.”—Suspense Magazine

“Finder can make reading about someone walking across a room excruciatingly suspenseful....This is a thriller that is as much about redemption as it is about escape. A remarkable exciting read.”—Booklist (starred review)

“If you’re in the mood for tense, witty angst about closed-down career opportunities and dirty money cleansed by family redemption, The Fixer is the way to go.”—The New York Times Book Review
 
“Joseph Finder takes a familiar story and gives it a unique spin in his latest page-turner, The Fixer.”—Associated Press

From the Publisher

04/25/2016
In Thriller Award–winner Finder’s lively third Nick Heller novel (after 2011’s Buried Secrets), the website Slander Sheet is about to run a story claiming that a highly placed U.S. government official has had a regular relationship with a prostitute. Lawyers for a top international law firm want Boston-based private intelligence operative Heller to check on the story’s authenticity. Heller says he isn’t interested, but he accepts the assignment after learning that the official in question is Chief Justice Jeremiah Claflin of the Supreme Court. Holes quickly appear in the allegations against Claflin, and Heller blows it out of the water. But it’s been too easy, and Heller’s instincts tell him there’s far more to this case than just a smear attempt on a judge. Who owns Slander Sheet, and what was this case really about? Conventions of the contemporary political thriller abound, but a tight plot, sharp dialogue, and a cast of intriguing characters keep the story a cut above the genre pack. Author tour. Agent: Daniel Conaway, Writers House. (July)

Publishers Weekly

2016-03-16
Hired to clear the chief justice of the United States of dallying with a call girl, Boston-based investigator Nick Heller becomes entwined in a complicated scheme that leads to murder. Superattorney Gideon Parnell is the Washington VIP who hires Heller. A black civil rights hero who's golfed with all the golfing presidents since LBJ, he's capable of pulling any and all strings in D.C. But he's powerless to prevent the gossip website Slander Sheet from running an exposé about Chief Justice Jeremiah Claflin, who reputedly was given three nights with the hooker by a casino mogul in whose favor he had ruled in a recent case. Heller has 48 hours to discredit the story. It's easy enough to determine that Claflin never set foot in the hotel room in which he is said to have consorted with young Kayla Pitts—whose working name is Heidi L'Amour. (The judge has one of the better alibis: he was having electroshock treatment.) But after Pitts is found dead, an apparent suicide, and Heller and his crack team infiltrate the secret ownership of Slander Sheet, unsettling new wrinkles in the case point to an unlikely suspect. The book, the third and best entry in a series, is about as airtight as you can get, plotwise. Heller, a former Special Forces operative in Iraq, is a convincing combination of physical toughness and intelligence—one of the book's pleasures is its descriptions of modern detection techniques. And in Mandy Seeger, the former ace Washington Post reporter who lives to regret writing for Slander Sheet, Heller has an attractive running partner and romantic interest. Finder shows off his top-notch storytelling skills, moving with ease from high places to low in the nation's capital.

Kirkus Reviews

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