Finders Keepers

Will Ferguson’s latest novel, The Finder, is cinematic in its twists and turns. The narrative globe-trots across three continents, threading together stories of far-flung characters linked by a shadowy figure with a knack for tracking down lost items and a reputation for ruthlessness. It’s hard to resist casting a movie adaptation. A mid-career Al Pacino would star in the title role, with Tilda Swinton as Gaddy Rhodes, the prickly Interpol agent obsessed with locating him. Jack Nicholson, in the Chinatown years, could be Thomas Rafferty, a burnt-out travel writer who becomes the Finder’s unwitting prey. And Jessica Chastain, at her most hard-boiled, would play the flinty photo­journalist Tamsin Greene — Rafferty’s on-again, off-again lover.

It should come as no surprise that Ferguson studied screenwriting and film in his earlier life. But instead of pursuing a career in cinema, he became a writer. Before 419, his novel about Nigerian Internet...