My noir novella CLEANING UP FINN with All Due Respect Books – available as an e-book and Print.
Buy Cleaning Up Finn
Life is a constant party for restaurant manager, Finn Roose. When he seduces an underage woman on one of his booze cruises and loses her—literally, it sets off a massive search involving the police, her parents, and a private investigator. Finn is an expert manipulator but his endless lies only tighten the screws on himself and his unsuspecting best friend. Finn scrambles to make things right which may be too much to ask from a guy who can’t resist a hot babe and a stiff drink.
2017 ANTHONY FINALIST FOR BEST NOVELLA
2017 LEFTY FINALIST FOR BEST DEBUT MYSTERY
2017 SILVER IPPY AWARD FOR BEST WEST – PACIFIC REGIONAL FICTION
BEST OF 2016 LISTS
Honorable Mention from Derrick Horodyski of Out of the Gutter:
Cleaning Up Finn by Sarah M. Chen: A hell of a great novella that seemed to do everything right. A great main character and a great lightning bolt to the heart of a plot. Fun to read and left me wanting more.
From Will Viharo at Digital Media Ghost:
Cleaning Up Finn by Sarah M. Chen – This debut novel has been favorably compared to the likes of Gillian Flynn, but for my money it’s even more tautly constructed and impressively written than that accolade suggests: an authentically and humanistically resonant noir portrait of an amoral restaurant manager whose exploitative exploits backfire right in his face.
From Rob Hart at The Strand Magazine:
Check out these authors—up-and-coming voices in crime fiction, all of them with a ton of talent and potential.
Cleaning Up Finn by Sarah M. Chen – A lecherous restaurant manager gets a taste of his own medicine. Chen’s novella is a lean slice of noir with an old-school feel; the seaside setting conjures Charles Williams.
REVIEWS
From Benoit Lelievre’s Dead End Follies:
“Whether you’re into Greek tragedies, Alfred Hitchcock or old school Michael Douglas movies, you’ll get a kick out of Sarah M. Chen’s existentially indebted protagonist and the exquisite tortures she puts him through.”
From William E. Wallace’s Pulp Hack Confessions:
“Cleaning Up Finn Would Take a Truckload of Disinfectant.”
“With his misadventures piling up to the point where they seem utterly beyond repair, he decides to turn over a new leaf…Unfortunately, the leaf he turns over is poison oak…”
From the Col’s Criminal Library:
“You feel like your sympathies shouldn’t really rest with our main man, but somehow in the hands of Sarah Chen, they do. Can Finn clean up his act, get out from under and find some measure of redemption? Or is he doomed to repeat the mistakes of his past?”
From Tom Leins’ DIRTY BOOKS:
“This debut novella from Sarah M. Chen is a sun-blurred, booze-soaked excursion into the grubby underbelly of a Californian beach town.”
From Derrick Horodyski of OUT OF THE GUTTER:
“I absolutely loved Cleaning Up Finn by Sarah M. Chen. I defy anyone who reads this tightly wound novella to find anything wrong with it. It has a classic noir main character, death, despair, and—best of all—a full-throttle plot that picks up more and more speed as the plot unfolds.”