Finders Keepers: The Story of a Man who found $1 Million

Finders Keepers is a tale of the greed we all hold secret in our hearts. It focuses on real-life protagonist Joey Coyle, who finds $1.2 million dropped from an armored car in the early 70's. The author takes us into Joey's blue collar South Philadelphia, where we come to know Joey as a man full of self-loathing, who's chronically unemployable, and frequently high on drugs and alcohol. The second half of the book is darker, even tragic, as we watch Joey and his cronies slowly but inexorably sabotage his dreams of "being a big coke dealer or opening a body shop" with the purloined money. The ending is unexpected, and disturbing because, after all of this, Joey is a pretty likable character as screw-ups go. Excellently read by the author, I highly recommend this piece of offbeat Americana.

1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

A Philly crackhead finds a million. What to do? What to do? Mark Bowden once again writes a tight story. Good job.

Jumped around a lot and was kind of boring. I kept waiting for something great to happen.

This book was very dark to me. Because this is based on a true story I stayed with it until the end. It depressed me how this man's lifestyle was. Over all it was ok.

In enjoyed this fascinating tale. I was surprised to hear the author tell his story of marketing the story and helping to make it into a movie.

I've gotta agree with Gary from Stockton - this book was a SNOOZEROONIE! I think the only reason others gave it a good rating would be that they inserted themselves into Joey's situation and let their minds wander while the author went on and on and on and on.........geez - too much drug info, too much courtroom info (wayyyy too much) and then the ending drops off a cliff - "OK that's the end of my book"....

Good story. Had to sit back and laugh at some of the situations he got himself in. Amazing

I really enjoyed the book and the story, but the stupidity of Joey was amazing. This hit got an amazingly lucky break and screwed it all up. Quite a comedy of errors!

Good book. It was slow at some parts, but the narrator is very good to listen to.

I found this audiobook to be odd. It didn't really seem like a story but more like a timeline. It was read by the author himself and after listening I was completely unaware it was based on a true story that was later turned into a movie starring John Cusack.

If you've got nothing to do today, you could go outside and watch the grass grow or you could listen to this book. Sorry, but this was a real snoozer. Although the premise could have made an interesting book, there was so much mind-numbing minutiae that I eventually jumped to the next disc just to speed the book along. Too much detail about the money, the personalities and the trial. Boring with a capital B. Not what I hoped for at all. Sorry, Mr. Bowden.

This book on CD was good listen. It held my interest. I had actually heard about this on A.M Philadelphia years ago and Joey Coyle was being interviewed. I could not take my ear from the CD player.

The writing was easy to listen to while driving to/from work.