MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
The opening pages of the novel "The Oligarch's Daughter" introduce us to a man named Grant Anderson. He builds boats in New England. It is early morning. He is preparing to take a new client out on a fishing charter. The man arrives at the dock, and Grant Anderson detects a whiff of a Slavic accent, which makes his stomach turn. Turns out, boat builder Grant Anderson is not the man he claims to be. He is in hiding on the run from Russians who want him dead, and his client is actually a hit man there to kill him. Joseph Finder is the author of this cat and mouse tale, and he's here with me now. Joseph Finder, welcome.
JOSEPH FINDER: Thank you. Great to be here.
KELLY: Introduce us a bit more fully to Grant Anderson, without revealing too much. How does he wind up in this mess?
FINDER: Well, Grant, I guess I can reveal, is actually Paul. And Paul is a guy who is on the run from a Russian oligarch and his bad guys. And he's gone into hiding in a small town in New Hampshire, where he's lived for five years. And Grant has set up a new life for himself - all cash - in which he is building boats and takes payment in cash only. He doesn't want to leave a trace or record anywhere because he is not actually Grant Anderson. He is a guy named Paul Brightman.
KELLY: Yeah. Well, let's go to the Paul side of the story, and to the title of the book, "The Oligarch's Daughter." The oligarch's daughter is one Tatyana Galkin. What is her story?
FINDER: Well, Paul meets Tatyana at a fundraiser in New York, and they immediately hit it off. They both decide to leave the fundraiser early. And he thought that she was working there, and she turns out to be a guest, the way he is a guest. And they start dating. They really, really fall for each other. Tatyana does not reveal to Paul for months who she really is. She's living in an artist's studio apartment in New York, and he just thinks she's a photographer. And only later does he learn that her father is a billionaire oligarch. And he becomes friendly with the father and with the family, and Paul realizes that he really likes Russian culture. He really likes the Russian family that he's getting closer and closer to.
KELLY: You also remind us that when it comes to Russian oligarchs, there's rich and then there's oligarch rich.
FINDER: Right.
KELLY: Tell us a little bit about how you made that distinct in the book.
FINDER: Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, I won't say I talked to oligarchs because nobody would self-identify as an oligarch. But the oligarchs in Russia today - they're not rulers. They have made a deal with Putin to keep their fortune and stay out of politics. So this guy, Arkady, is a billionaire who runs a sort of hedge fund in New York and wants Paul to work for him. Arkady is a - kind of a charming, jovial, lovable guy, and at the same time, he's quite sinister. And Paul doesn't know what to make of him until the FBI comes up to Paul and tells him they want him to inform on his father-in-law. And Paul, of course, is - refuses that. He doesn't want to be unfaithful to his wife - they get married, obviously. And he doesn't want to be disloyal to his father-in-law, and he's terrified.
KELLY: And he's doing all this while eating the finest caviar and sipping Dom Perignon on yachts.
FINDER: That's right.
KELLY: I'm so hoping, Joseph Finder, you will tell me that you got to go out sailing around with rich Russians on their yachts in the name of research.
FINDER: You know, I didn't sail on yachts with rich Russians. I (laughter) - what I did was, I tracked down the captain of a super yacht who is often hired by oligarchs...
KELLY: Oh.
FINDER: ...To captain their yachts. And I was able to get all kinds of great detail from this guy, including, for instance, the fact that one of the oligarchs he worked for had a custom-made submarine inside his yacht that he would take out his guests on. So I thought, this is a detail I've got to use.
KELLY: (Laughter).
FINDER: Too good to be true.
KELLY: It sounds so Bond villain. This is real?
FINDER: Yep. Yep. It is real. It is real. But, you know, what's interesting about these oligarchs is that they are billionaires. They own sports teams. They are also patrons of the art in the U.S. They are sort of - I call them the new Medicis. And they are - and were, I should say - princes of the realm, princes of capitalism, in a sense, until the war in Ukraine began. And then they were persona non grata. They - overnight, they were forced out of the country. And this transformation - going from being somebody that you wanted on the board of your museum or your hospital or your university to someone who you wouldn't acknowledge was, to me, humanly fascinating, and it made this an interesting story to tell.
KELLY: One challenge you had to grapple with, that I imagine is new from when you were first writing about Russia, is how a person like Grant Anderson can disappear in the digital age, with cameras everywhere, facial recognition everywhere. How did you solve that?
FINDER: Exactly. I read a number of books on how to disappear. There's a lot of them. Most of them aren't very good. But I talked to one particular expert, and he told me that the secret these days is to find a small town where they don't have CCTV cameras and to live a life based on cash. Do not open a bank account. Or if you open a bank account, don't earn any interest. And there's all kinds of things you...
KELLY: So you don't have to report...
FINDER: ...Can't do.
KELLY: ...The taxes.
FINDER: Yeah, exactly. You do not want the IRS tracking you down. They will find out who you really are. So it's a real challenge these days. It's not like the old days and early thrillers I used to read, where you could just disappear by forging a passport. It doesn't work that way anymore. It's much, much more difficult.
KELLY: One last character I have to ask you about because of her name. You have a character named Mary Louise. She works in audio. She's a podcaster. She's a total busybody.
FINDER: Yep.
KELLY: What was the inspiration?
FINDER: It wasn't you. I promise.
(LAUGHTER)
KELLY: You've disappointed me again.
FINDER: I'm so sorry.
KELLY: (Laughter).
FINDER: But yeah, she's got a podcast. She is the wife of his best friend from college days. And Mary Louise is sort of a busybody. And we like her, and then we don't like her so much. And, you know, it's one of these things that you want a character who another character is going to rub up against and create sparks. And that's what Mary Louise is for in the book.
KELLY: Joseph Finder - he is author of "The Oligarch's Daughter." Thank you.
FINDER: Thanks a lot, Mary Louise.
(SOUNDBITE OF TODD TEJE'S "PREBEN GOES TO ACAPULCO") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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