I received a free ARC from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.
I wanted to love this. The blurb sounded so interesting. I love the idea of finding lost pieces of history, and I enjoy a story with separate parts that all come together in the end. Sounds ideal, right?
And I guess for some it was, but for me, it just didn't work. There was something in the writing, a try-hard-ness, like it wanted to be read by a certain set, you know the one, the painfully cool and clever? It was quirky. It was gritty. It was cute. It was too much for me. It felt like every line had to stand out, kind of like in a newspaper article, how a section of text gets pulled out and bolded for effect? It was like the author wanted every line to be a possible pull quote. Which was both entertaining and tiresome in equal measure. There were some genuinely fantastic lines, and some that made me snort-laugh, but taken all together, it was a bit too intense.
Also, pretty much every character was unlikable. Catherine the shepherdess and, maybe, poor, long-suffering Det. Shimada being the notable exceptions. It made it hard to get invested, honestly, when you're ambivalent about whether anyone lives or dies or gets brought to justice.
The other thing. Those intersecting storyline do come together, but in a very anticlimactic way.
Ok, but having said all that, it was still an entertaining read. It did hook me. I did want to know what was happening and why and how it would all end. Unfortunately, I never did find out why, and the what and how weren't all that satisfying, either. Credit, though, for creativity, and for some clever wordsmithing. I'll never look at a cat's tail the same way again.

The Finder by Will Ferguson is the perfect read when you are on staycation. Readers will escape into the travel adventures and mysteries of lost objects from New Zealand to Japan. The delicate threads of the hunt for them made this like I was reading a non-fiction book! I have lost precious things before. I am not sure I would go as far as Agent Rhodes.

I don’t think I have read anything like The Finder! One thing I love about Will’s books is that you are always guaranteed a great adventure!

I received a copy of this novel from the publisher via NetGalley.

I am not going to be able to finish this one. The prologue was mystifying, the first part very slow and almost travelogue-like in its meandering, and then the second part has defeated me. It purports to be recalling the narrator's childhood in Belfast, and includes lots of British vocabulary and habits (chips and mushy peas, tea with milk etc) but there are also references to row houses, pocketbooks, drywall, the practice of hiding Easter Eggs etc, and these grate on me and throw me out of the story. Perhaps they are clues to some later to be developed mystery, but I am not interested enough to continue and find out.

I wish to thank NetGalley and Simon & Schuster for Will Ferguson’s latest book, The Finder. He has been the author of two of my favourite books in recent years; 419 (winner of a Giller literary prize) and Road Trip Rwanda, a travelogue and description of that country 20 years often the horrific genocide. He is also a three-time winner oh the Stephen Leacock Prize for humour.

The book didn’t really come together for me. I found it disjointed and felt disconnected at times. I thought it was overloaded with too much content and a variety of themes. The characters were compelling with well-developed personalities but didn’t interact as much as I would have liked. They were so intriguing that each one of them could feature in a book of their own. Their dialogues were sharp, witty, and thought-provoking. There was a gripping adventure story in there, a mystery, and suspense near the end. This was also a travelogue, with a vivid sense of the places visited.
The story is set in some mostly uninhabited outer Japanese Islands, Christchurch, NZ, at the time of the earthquake, and the remote Australian Outback. Other countries where the characters travelled are mentioned to further explain their backgrounds and life history.

The story revolves around a variety of characters. Tom Rafferty, a freelance writer for travel journals, always restlessly moving from one faraway country to another, managing to be often in the wrong place at the wrong time. He routinely sends off bland, mundane tourist articles, rather than important world events surrounding him. He misses his lost love, Rebecca. A courageous war photojournalist, Tamsin, and Tom keep crossing paths. She has found she prefers to be in war zones. There is Catherine, a lonely young girl who lives with her addled father on an isolated NZ sheep farm. A stiff, cold Interpol worker, Gaddy Rhodes is obsessed with a theory that valuable lost objects are being found, only to appear again and be sold for record-breaking prices. She vows to hunt down the Finder. I was the most interested in someone called 'the small man’ who has a forgettable face. I assume he is the villain but was well described and fascinating. When these people meet, the conversations we're clever and absorbing.

A theme is lost objects and the lengths people will go to retrieve then. Mentioned are some Romanov Faberge eggs, a stolen Stradivarius violin, Buddy Holly’s glasses, a sacred Tusi drum, Mohammed Ali’s gold medal, and the last reel for Hitchcock's first movie. These iconic objects increase in value after being lost. There are also lost objects that have mainly sentimental value for their owners: a pewter pendant, a St. Anthony medallion, a wedding ring, and a letter written in a drunken state to a lost love.
3.5 stars rounded up to 4.