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Fictionista, Foodie, Feline-lover

Showing posts with label Finders Keepers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Finders Keepers. Show all posts

Wednesday, June 8, 2016

Finders Keepers by Mark Bowden...a review

I was talking about non-fiction writers I admire the other day and I somehow left Mark Bowden (Killing Pablo, Blackhawk Down) off my list. This is the review I did of his book Finders Keepers back in 2002.



In Mark Bowden’s FINDERS KEEPERS, a South Philly loser becomes a folk hero when he finds $1.2 million that fell off an armored car. In 1981, the economy in Philadelphia was like a Bruce Springsteen song—jobs that have sustained families for years have disappeared and they aren’t coming back.  That puts people like 28-year-old JOEY COYLE on the streets without too many options.  Joey never finished high school, but on the docks, he was respected for his almost supernatural knowledge of machinery.  Unemployed, he just another speed freak.  And he’s getting into a downward spiral—using all his money to buy meth and then borrowing from his dealers.

This story really is kind of irresistible.  Joey is a natural born loser, although he has charm to burn.  (There’s literally no one with a bad word for him, even when he’s at his most “hopped up” from the drug he calls ‘blow.”)  There are moments in this strange saga where we’re almost doubled over laughing—from his manic search to find a suitable hiding place for the money to his attempts to shove money into his clothes at the airport before resorting to donning panty hose.