The Knowland Retribution

The Locator #1

by Richard Greener

With tainted meat the weapon and corporate greed the motive, The Knowland Retribution is an extremely topical suspense-revenge thriller. Walter Sherman, a/k/a the Locator, is a tracker who honed his skills in Vietnam. The colorful cast of characters also includes Sherman's two friends--a bartender with a mysterious past and an old black man who smokes like a chimney; a feisty young woman who writes obituaries for the New York Times; a southern lawyer who has lost everything and has only one thing to live for; and a group of Wall Street investment bankers who make a deadly decision.The action takes the reader from a tiny Caribbean bar on the island of St. John to the editorial boardroom of the New York Times, from the gleaming skyline of Atlanta to the isolation of northern New Mexico, from Adirondack hideouts to Manhattan suites to Mississippi backwoods. This complex and compelling mystery thriller is the first in a series featuring Walter Sherman as the Locator.

Genres: Mystery, Fiction, Thriller, Suspense, Crime, Action, Novels

432 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2004

About the author

Mr. Greener lives in the Atlanta area. He is a former broadcast industry executive, an award-winning essayist, and recipient of the coveted CEBA Award for excellence in business. He began writing novels while on the waiting list for a heart transplant. The devastating complications that followed his heart transplant in 2006 inspired his Kindle Singles memoir, Trapped published in 2011. Mr. Greener is an occasional blogger for Huffington Post.

Reviews

[Tim · Rating 4 out of 5]

For those who are interested in reading this because it's the basis for the TV Show The Finder, don't expect it to be at all similar. The main character has the same name and lives in a tropical location and hangs out at a bar, but that's it for the similarities.

Now that's done, let's discuss the book. It's centered around Walter Sherman, an Vietnam vet who has a knack for finding people/things. He's been hired to find a person who's been killing people associated with a company who sold E. Coli-tainted meat that caused many deaths.

We find out the identity of the killer pretty quick and the book goes through the viewpoints of several different characters including: the killer, Walter, the potential targets, and a reporter.

Having a person who is just someone who finds people makes for an interesting approach to what could otherwise be a relatively standard thriller. The characters, including a sympathetic villain, make it a better novel and the ending is different than one would expect.

[Eric_W · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have always thought that Americans confuse justice with revenge. When they cry for justice, what they really want is revenge. That could be a theme of this book.

A firm in New York calculates the cost-benefit ratio of cleaning up a meat plant known to be contaminated with e-coli against possible deaths from eating the bad meat. Three of the 864 people killed happen to be the wife, daughter and grandchild of Leonard Martin, a very successful real estate lawyer in Atlanta.

Martin goes on the skids, sitting around drinking and eating, until he receives a disc and an apology from a researcher who had just committed suicide in New York. Martin pulls himself together, sells his share in the law firm and all his possessions and investments, creates a shell Evangelical organization, pretends to buy property and a skiff in the Bahamas, but really buys 270 acres in the middle of nowhere New Mexico. There he exercises, eats properly, becomes fit and buys and becomes extremely competent with sniper rifles and ammunition. He sets out to achieve what he considers justice by killing those responsible for making the wrong decisions.

Suspense is built by switching between three players: Walter Sherman, a locator, who, as a child never lost anything and developed a skill at finding people; three businessmen who desperately need a killer found, yet they don’t know who this person might be; and Leonard Martin. A fourth key individual is Isobel, an obit writer for the Times who is used by both Sherman and Martin for their own ends. Sherman has his own ethical concerns because it has been his practice to simply find people, not follow through once the lost have been recovered. The executives have their own ideas of justice/revenge for the killing of their own.

If you are a vegetarian you will find much to like in this book since the author goes out of his way to condemn the way animals are killed and processed and the lackadaisical method of inspection, not to mention the callous indifference of corporate executives interested only in how a cost-benefit analysis of people dying from e-coli poisoning will affect their stock prices.

You can see what’s coming but it’s really well put together and just rivets your attention. Some may feel that Greener’s occasional screeds against the media, meat industry and corporate indifference to be not germane to the story. I did not find that to be true. And I must admit to some sympathy for Martin. In fact, I remain surprised that there are still some Wall Street execs walking around.

[Damond · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is the first of the two books from which the new show "The Finder" is based. The book cannot be any more different from the show. In the show Walter is a guy in his thirties who finds anything, Isobel is a U.S. Marshal and Walter's girlfriend, and Leo is a former attorney who works at Walter's bar in Florida. In the book, Walter only finds people, lives on a Caribbean island and is called The Locator instead, Isobel is a woman who writes obits for the New York Times and is the person who figures out there's a connection between three seemingly unrelated murders and a horrible e coli outbreak two years earlier. Together they figure out that Leo, a former real estate attorney who lost his wife, daughter and grandsons to the outbreak, is the person behind the killings. Still, despite the differences, it was an entertaining read. I'll definitely read the second book. I would have given this four stars, but the first few chapters were a little too difficult to wade through with all of the factual information about e coli and the economical ramifications for the companies involved. Plus the chapters jump around in time for the first third without and indication at the start of each chapter, which would have been more helpful than having to figure out where in the timeline you were while reading.

[Meredith Kaupp · Rating 3 out of 5]

I got this one because I heard that it was the basis for the TV show "The Finder." I was surprised at how little the show follows the book, but then I remembered that it's by the people who made "Bones" which follows the Kathy Reichs books by about 3%.

Anyway, I love the characters in the series, but they aren't as interesting or layered in the book. Overall, I like the show better, which is rare.

On its own, the story was very interesting. It makes you think about how far you would go in a similar situation. It brings up the difference between justice and revenge.

In the end, I'm not sure I want to eat ground beef anymore. I also don't know if I'll read the next book. This one was fine, but I certainly didn't love it.

[Bethany · Rating 4 out of 5]

I started reading this book because it was the basis for the short-lived TV show, The Finder. I enjoyed the somewhat cheesy TV show, so I wanted to give the book a chance. It was not exactly was I was expecting but was pretty good. I guess you would consider it a murder mystery, or a who-done-it, but it was not as suspenseful as most of the mysteries I like to read. Pretty predictable and had a slightly weak ending but I enjoyed the story and the writing.

[Douglas · Rating 4 out of 5]

How to rate a book that is good but for idiosyncratic reasons is off-putting to you? Here corporate execs run the risk of thousands of deaths due to e coli infected beef because a recall would end a deal worth hundreds of millions. Now I never worked in such rarified air or with such callous people, but I did work as a lawyer for 20 years and I am familiar with the culture of American business and the story of the Knowland Retribution is uncomfortably accurate about that culture and government’s inability to effectively regulate it. So, for me, this book failed to be the escape from reality I was looking for. Still, it was well written with an interesting main character (Walter Sherman). It is easy to see how author Richard Greener’s “Locator” books became the basis for an excellent tv show (“The Finder” which, unfortunately, did not have a large enough audience to continue for very long). Therefore, I am confident that this book deserves the four stars I gave it even though for me personally it was a 2.5 star experience.

Two years after a Leonard Martin lost his wife, daughter and two young grandchildren to bad beef he receives information about how corporate executives knowingly ran the risk that killed is family. Martin begins to take his revenge on the people who put money ahead of his family. Once he makes a start some of his would be victims use their connections and money to hire the “Locator” to find Martin.

Bottom line: the Knowland Retribution is a well written suspense/revenge story with excellent characters and ambiance.

[Jeni · Rating 4 out of 5]

Difficult to get into at first, but worth it. I admire authors who make readers work a bit to get it, it's much nicer than being slammed over the head with "meaning" and "Wow! Look what I did with words there!"
Their is new real mystery in the book, but the delight is in the full story slowly unfolding, while characters are developed more fully.
The new show, The Finder, is loosely based on these Walter Sherman books. I've enjoyed the show Bones, which was developed by the same people working on The Finder. I also enjoyed the books by Kathy Reichs that Bones is based one. So I figured that's two good reasons to give these books a shot. Glad I did.
I will certainly be looking for the next one.

[Kristi · Rating 2 out of 5]

Okay. I picked up Knowland Retribution and "Book Two" in the Locator series, Lacey Confessions, because I liked the short-lived Finder TV series. I use quotations above because there are only two books in the series, making it even shorter-lived than the TV version.

The connection between the books and the show is tenuous. I realize I'm no doubt biased because of encountering the show first, but I felt the show had a raffish charm that the books lacked. The book felt very standard thriller-y, and admittedly, that's not usually my thing. Walter Sherman in the book failed to grow on me as a character. In fact, he doesn't seem to *be* much of a character. There are a few interesting things about him - liking old hotels, making quick judgments about the people he meets - but they aren't really enough, and they kind of fall by the wayside once the action begins. So... I don't know. Probably the biggest tell here is that I'm not at all sure I'll bother with Lacey Confessions.

It's interesting. I occasionally write something because I read something and think, "That's a good idea poorly executed." I wonder if that's what the TV show creators did here... (Case in point: "the Finder" is simply a much better nickname than "the Locator." Also, the voting chalkboard in the bar, one of the few holdovers from the book, is much better handled in the show.)

[Mary · Rating 4 out of 5]

I discovered this book through a not so obscure reference on a rerun of the show "BONES." On this show, Walter Sherman, introduced as a past acquaintance of Seeley, was a man with a gift for finding things and people, lost or missing. Intrigued by the credits at the end of the show which stated that the Sherman character was based on "The Locator" series by Richard Greener, I went in search of the "real" Walter Sherman and found him in the first book of this "series" entitled the THE KNOWLAND RETRIBUTION.

Greener provides a fast-paced, well researched action thriller novel with characters much more complex and likable than the ones tangentially portrayed in the BONES series. Each character has past that could easily become books unto themselves but we are provided just enough infomation to get a good sense of the person. Even more intriguing than Walter himself, is the person who he is sent to find. For fans of suspense thrillers, this book keeps you engaged until the very end and is reminiscent of The Firm by Grisham but definitely with a story all its own. Highly recommend for those who enjoyed Grisham's earliest works. Great vacation read.

[AJ Payne · Rating 2 out of 5]

A few weeks ago the television show did a sort of back door pilot to a new show (that may or may not be in production). I really liked it and thought "Man, if they make that show, I will definitely watch it!" Anyway, I did some research and found out it was based on a couple of books about a guy who locates things for a living. Thus, the name of the series "The Locator Series". Anyway, this is the first book in the series so I thought I would read it.

It was not bad, and it has an interesting premise. But man, the show was much better than the book. The characters were much more interesting and quirky in the show - though they were more realistic in the book. What I found most interesting in the book was the character that went around killing people and the story behind him, and then the corporate cover-ups. The protagonist, Walter Sherman, was a pretty boring guy though he seemed to have an interesting background when it came up.

It's alright, but unless you're pretty desperate for a summer read you can probably pass on this.

[Stewart · Rating 3 out of 5]

Given my long(ish) term love affair with Kathy Reichs and her Bones books, and my new passion for Tess Gerritsen and her Rizzoli and Isles series, I thought I'd give the books that were the impetus for The Finder a chance.

Unlike any "mystery" book I've read, I quite enjoyed a different approach to "the" format. This mystery doesn't hold back the killer's identity for a big reveal near the end, you know who is choosing to assasinate the people responsible for several deathes due to e. coli infested hamburger from the beginning of the book. Free of this plot-focused device, this book has enjoyable characterization for each of the main players as they struggle with how they are going to perform in the roles forced upon them.

Really, it was like reading a mystery masquerading as "classy lit". Kind of like Gilead, but with a plot. I enjoyed and am requesting the next book from the library as soon as I submit this review.

[Sharon · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is the inspiration for TV's "The Finder". The book's Walter Sherman is less paranoid, older, and has different friends. He still hangs out in a bar, but is just as adept at finding people. He lives on an island in a very nice house on the ocean and has a very adequate income. He has lots of very grateful former clients who are quite willing to give him a hand in his investigations whenever he asks.

In this book, he is on the trail of a serial killer who is extracting "justice" on the persons responsible for the death of of his whole family in the mass poisoning with tainted meat across the southeast a few years ago. The point of view changes from person to person so that a multi-viewpoint narrative is established early on. This allows the reader to follow the reasoning and motives for all the actions taken in the action.

I enjoyed this book and will continue reading the series. I know that there is at least one more book, and I hope that there will be more.

[Alexandra · Rating 4 out of 5]

Despite the fact that it took me quite some time to finish this book (mostly because I keep forgetting that I have books on my tablet), I thoroughly loved this book. As I am used to reading books adapted to movies and / or TV, I did not expect book Walter to be the same as TV Walter, which he isn't.

There are two reasons I didn't give this book five stars. The first is that the book jumps back and forwards in the timeline, especially in the beginning, which made for a slightly confusing read before I got my bearing. The second, which is linked to the first, is that, with all the jumping back and forth in the timeline, along with a wide cast of characters that are not initially clearly linked, it takes a good part of the book before you feel as though the introduction is completed.

[Ken Schloman · Rating 3 out of 5]

An entertaining book about revenge and justice. The author developed an interesting main character who finds people. He is surrounded by a colorful cast of supporting characters. The "villain" is actually a sympathetic character seeking revenge for the death of his family caused by corporate greed. The chief weakness of the novel is, in my view, an unrealistic conclusion. Kind of a letdown. The main character's back story is well developed although somewhat slowly. The TV show "The Finder" was loosely based on the novel. I stress loosely. The novel is significantly better. I listened to the book via Audiobooks and I think that the reader did an excellent job and added to the mood the text creates. If you like social conscious thrillers this book is for you.

[Adrian · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was first introduced to the character of Walter Sherman through the crossover episode in Bones. He was an interesting enough character that I felt compelled to check out the books he was based on. This book did not lessen my opinion of that, but he felt highly underused and the bits where he wasn't involved were... not great. I can see why; he seems like a tough character to write. If the connecting story was interesting this could have worked, but there was little to get you invested in the drama or the stakes, and the outcome was flatly predictable, with only Walter potentially acting as a wildcard himself.

Disappointing, but not enough so that I wouldn't try again with the character. Maybe I need to track down the TV series, or he would work better in short stories. Ah well.

[Ginger Vampyre · Rating 2 out of 5]

I had a hard time getting into the flow of this book. The characters were very flat and the plot was dry. The author attempted to create suspense by doing scene jumps when a character has a "revelation" but wasn't revealing it to the reader, but it left the reading feeling choppy and unfinished. The revelations were obvious and actually slowed the story down. The entirety of the book is summed up in the obituary written by the only female character who doesn't die and seems to exist as a sex object/plot device. Guy goes on a homicidal rampage after his family dies eating beef company knew was contaminated.

[Paul · Rating 4 out of 5]

Plot or Premise

Walter Sherman has one unique skill. He can find anything that someone is searching for, which most of the time is a person. His nickname is the Locator, which he earned in Vietnam. Now he earns a living doing 5-10 jobs a year when people come to him asking him to find someone. In this first book in the series, a bunch of suits want him to find whoever is killing off the business people who were involved in a tainted meat scandal.

What I Liked

The premise is unique. While lots of series have private investigators who take on cases, including missing persons cases, or series with police detectives hunting a serial killer, Walter isn't any of these things. He only works by referral from someone that he has done work for in the past, he doesn't advertise, he has no office or website, etc. Finding an anonymous killer? Not something he normally does. But the money is too good to say no, and it seems like the killer is worth catching.

The book series was made into a short-lived TV show (The Finder), with a number of significant changes -- they made it that he was injured in Iraq or Afghanistan and can now find things, he's not living in the US Virgin Islands but somewhere in Florida, there's an on-again/off-again love interest who is also a US Marshal, etc.

The business side of the story is pretty well-done, although a couple of the "bad" business guys are a little bit of a cliché. Nevertheless, it has almost an early John Grisham feel to it in places. And the bar near his home, Billy's bar, with Billy and Ike as his two best friends is really well done.

What I Didn't Like

While Walter doesn't know the identity of the killer, the reader does. And it takes some of the mystery out. Walter is barely present for the first 20% of the book, so it's pretty heavy on exposition of additional characters. Plus, while one of the main characters starts to identify with the killer's sense of "justice" and you are meant to see the callousness of the original, the vicious deaths that are delivered are only mildly explained. I never felt any sympathy for the killer, and the ending is questionable. There's also no explanation of how he knows everything he does, how he found it all out, he just shows up, kills someone, and moves on. There's only one scene where it shows him "stalking" someone and even that is relatively bland. However, I think my biggest objections are a love interest that we are told is all about passion, but doesn't seem to really drive any chemistry except in a scene or two, and the original "hook" that gets Walter involved is glossed over. The reader knows they are scummy people but Walter's reasons to help are murky at best. Later he reacts as if he was betrayed, but most of what they told him was relatively true -- they just didn't tell him the whole story and despite being an ace interrogator, he seems surprised to learn other details they hid from him. Yet the story moves along at a good clip, so while I would be tempted to drop it to 3 out of 5, the pace bumps it back to 4.

The Bottom Line

Come for the Locator…who eventually joins the story

[Jennifer Cannady · Rating 4 out of 5]

As with many other readers, I looked this up because I enjoyed a tv series called The Finder which was a spinoff of characters from the tv series Bones. Other readers have noted that the book and the tv show are pretty different from one another but I still enjoyed reading this first novel about Walter Sherman, who has an uncanny ability to find lost people (both those in hiding and those truly lost).

The story is fairly complex with a lot of characters centered around the aftermath of corporate greed and a tainted meat scandal that kills hundreds of people. Action takes place amid a number of locations I know well so it was especially fun to see references to offices, hotels, bars and restaurants in Atlanta and also New York, New Orleans and Saint John.

The build up of the story is a bit cumbersome but the persistent reader is rewarded with a satisfying ending.

[Preston · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fast and engaging read, even when you know all of the bad guys up front.
Corporate greed is individual greed, and a victim that should have died brings justice on the individuals that chose corporate profit over the potential lives that could be lost.
Walter Sherman sifts through countless haystacks in search of a very illusive needle, and finds it.
Great pool or airplane book.
Read this one first!

[Mandy · Rating 2 out of 5]

A little disappointing actually. I can see how the potential was there to take liberties and create a tv show with some semblance of these characters. And honestly, I think they benefited from the results.

Walter was too much like the slew of other broken former military protagonists in men's adventure fiction. And the author couldn't write women.

I suspect I won't continue with this series for these reasons. But I finished it, and my curiosity has been satisfied.

[Tymur · Rating 2 out of 5]

It's probably a good enough book, at least writing is. But when you realise that to get to the action you have to learn the whole life story of each character, and there are many, and it is middle of the book already and you still don't quite understand what is the point of all this...
Well, good luck to others, I'm going to read something else.

[Kat · Rating 3 out of 5]

So I tried this because I enjoyed The Finder show.
The book is definitely different.
Hard to get into properly, though I'm not sure if that's just me, the legal language spewed occasionally or just the genre.
This story was . . . interesting. I do want to try one more before I make a judgement call.

[Donna · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great story

A great read. Quirky characters and a great story make this a book you don't want to end. There is only one more book in this series and I hope it is as good as this one.

[Luisa · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read it because I watched the Finder series and I figured the book must be good too. It was an exciting read, but I thought the female characters lacked something.

[Eileen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Anyone who loved the TV show Leverage would like this book.

[SPAM · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sadly one of those books where the book had more detail, but the TV show was actually better.

[John Ferringer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very enjoyable

[Sandra Pham · Rating 4 out of 5]

It’s a good book but not like tv show

The tv show has a younger Walter and the storylines are a bit more fun. The book is entertaining but a litter more dramatic

[Tita · Rating 2 out of 5]

Very convoluted. Half way through the book, the voice, or writer, changed. The tone was different and the book became even harder to follow. Very confusing and too many characters.

[John Wolf · Rating 4 out of 5]

I picked this up because the Locator character in the TV series, Bones, is loosely based on Walter. Really enjoyed the story line here and how it developed.