Joseph Finder was born in Chicago, Illinois on October 6, 1958, and spent his early childhood in Afghanistan and the Philippines. He received a B.A. in Russian studies from Yale University and a M.A. at the Harvard Russian Research Center. He also served as a teaching fellow at Harvard from 1983-84.
His first book, Red Carpet: The Connection between the Kremlin and America's Most Powerful Businessmen, was published in 1983 and is a nonfiction account of Western capitalists making profits from trade with the communist world. His first novel, The Moscow Club, was published in 1991. His other novels include Extraordinary Powers, The Zero Hour, Paranoia, Power Play, and the Nick Heller series. Company Man won a the Barry and Gumshoe Awards for Best Thriller and Killer Instinct won the International Thriller Writers Award for Best Novel. High Crimes was adapted into a 2002 Fox film starring Ashley Judd and Morgan Freeman.
Finder's novel, The Fixer, made The New York Times best seller list in 2015.
In addition to fiction, he writes on espionage and international relations for the New York Times, The Washington Post, and The New Republic.
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