My First Thriller: Joseph Finder

Joe Finder must have thought he knew the secrets to selling a book. His first, a work of nonfiction, Red Carpet: The Connection Between the Kremlin and America’s Most Powerful Businessmen, had a hardcover run of 10,000. 

It sold out.

Sounds like an early and smooth ride into the literary sunset. But there’s a catch. (There’s always something in book publishing.)

Finder, a Harvard graduate student in Russian Studies at the time, managed to anger one of the richest and most powerful men in America while writing Red Carpet. The man was so mad he approached Finder’s academic advisor with a proposal: kick Finder out of school and he’d write Harvard a check so big they’d have to use a wheelbarrow to deliver it. He also tempted the university with a trove of personal papers for its archives.

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