THE OLIGARCH'S DAUGHTER

Marrying a Russian billionaire’s daughter proves to be a very bad move for New York hedge fund manager Paul Brightman.

The beautiful daughter, Tatyana, impresses Paul with her independence, rejecting the excesses of her Upper East Side father to live in a modest East Village apartment and pursue a career as a photographer. Paul loves her street portraits; Artforum not so much. It doesn’t take long for the oligarch, Arkady Galkin, to break down the couple’s resistance to living large, bestowing lavish gifts on them and hiring Paul for his own investment firm. Paul’s doubts about taking the job come to a head when fellow employees start dying mysteriously. That’s enough to prompt him to accept a solicitation from the FBI to spy on his father-in-law. When those amateur efforts are exposed, he fears he will be the next victim and flees—without Tatyana, who won’t leave her family, but with a desperately sought thumb drive. For five years, he lives under an assumed name in a small New Hampshire town, building boats and dating a nice school teacher whom he keeps ignorant of his past—until the day he manages to kill a Russian assassin with a speargun in a scuffle on a boat and dumps him in the ocean, and then Alec Wood, Paul’s friend and the deputy police chief, is found murdered at his house. Disappearing into the gloomy woods, pursued by both the Russians and the FBI, he practices the survivalist skills he learned from his estranged father, who abandoned his family when his son was young to live in a hut. The plot convolutions don’t stop there. If Paul, who narrates the book, were a strong character, he would be able to ride over the forced twists and turns. But, he is such a bland protagonist and so insistent on making dumb moves, it’s impossible to root for him.

A thriller with a decent setup but ridiculous outcomes.