Finders Keepers: The Story of Joey Coyle (Hardback)

Format:	Hardback 209 pages

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Times were hard for Joey Coyle. A dockworker from a struggling neighbourhood of south Philadelphia, Joey lived with his ailing mother and a drug habit he could barely support. One February afternoon in 1981, he was on his way to score when he found two curious yellow containers lying in the street. They had just fallen off the back of an armoured van and contained $1.2 million, in cash, in unmarked notes from a casino. "Finders Keepers" tells how Coyle secretly shared the money with everyone around him, including his girlfriend, random strangers and the area's most notorious mob boss. Against the background of growing media interest in the fate of the missing money, Coyle lived for seven days in a drug-fuelled whirlwind, planning his future as a rich man, but terrified that he was about to be captured and killed. "Finders Keepers" is the remarkable story of an everyday man faced with an extraordinary dilemma and a dramatic account of greed, generosity and betrayal.

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Published
10/10/2002

Publisher
Atlantic Books

ISBN
9781843541103

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UK Kirkus review

The fact that two bestsellers by Mark Bowden (Black Hawk Down and Killing Pablo) have been made into successful films has certainly raised his profile as a writer of complex and energetic thrillers. Unlike many of his competitors, he doesn't follow a formula: his speciality is to strike off in new directions with each book, and that is certainly the case with this fast-moving and persuasive novel. Joey Coyle is a dock worker eking out an existence in Philadelphia while looking after his sick mother and attempting to deal with his own crippling drug habit. Setting out for a drugs fix, he comes across two strange yellow containers in the street. To his amazement, he finds that the containers are stuffed with over a million dollars in unmarked notes. Coyle hides the containers before he is spotted, and learns that they are part of the loot from an attack on an armoured van. Then he does a strange thing: he begins to share the money with almost everyone he knows, from the woman he loves to strangers chosen at random, and even local criminals. As the newspapers begin to home in on the stolen money, Coyle lives in terrified suspense: will he end his days a rich man? Or will the police - or the mob - get him? As well as delivering the standard thriller mechanics, Bowden's book is an intriguing meditation on the nature of greed, and the reader is forced to examine just what he or she would do in the circumstances that Joey Coyle finds himself in. (Kirkus UK)