Joseph Finder's crackerjack thriller Guilty Minds captivates with the kind of adrenaline rush one would get in a racecar driven by an expert who knows how to maneuver sharp twists and turns for maximum excitement. The majority of Finder's 14 novels are standalones that feature ordinary men thrust into extraordinary (and life-threatening) circumstances--where they outsmart highly trained spies and killers. Guilty Minds marks the third appearance of former Special Forces soldier turned spy-for-hire Nick Heller (following Vanished and Buried Secrets). With his Black Ops training, Heller is far from an ordinary man, but Finder infuses him with quirks, humor and frailties that make him a down-to-earth and entertaining narrator.
The political gossip website Slander Sheet is about to publish accusations that a Supreme Court justice has repeatedly hired a prostitute. Heller is hired to stop it. But circumstances quickly become more convoluted and nefarious after Heller disproves the story. When he tries to discover who is behind the smear campaign, the trail back to the source becomes littered with dead bodies.
Much of Heller's immense appeal is the fact that he always has several backup plans, and by his thinking logically through clever solutions and escapes, the improbable becomes realistic. Readers learn how to escape from a locked walk-in safe, elude police while stranded on a hotel balcony and how to escape if their arms and legs are zip-tied to an aluminum chair. Finder's bite-size chapters make it nearly impossible to stop reading Guilty Minds--a wildly entertaining and exciting story of blackmail, corruption and murder. --Kevin Howell, independent reviewer and marketing consultant