The Anniversary

The name Alex Finlay is a pseudonym adopted by Anthony Franze, a Washington, DC attorney who spent years building a parallel career as a novelist before assuming the Finlay identity. Under his own name, Franze published a series of legal thrillers set in and around the U.S. Supreme Court, including The Last Justice (2012), The Advocate’s Daughter (2016), and The Outsider (2017) drawing on his professional experience as an appellate lawyer to craft courtroom-driven suspense. These novels earned him a reputation as a competent practitioner of the Washington legal thriller, but they occupied a relatively narrow subgenre. 

Franze adopted the Finlay pseudonym in 2020 to publish Every Last Fear, marking a deliberate pivot toward broader, more character-driven commercial suspense. That debut, which centered on a family destroyed by a true-crime scandal, became a bestseller and was optioned for television, establishing Finlay as a voice in contemporary thriller fiction. He followed it with The Night Shift (2022), another critical and commercial success, and the national bestseller, Parents Weekend (2025) before publishing The Anniversary in 2026. 

Across his novels, Finlay often features fractured families, the long reach of a single traumatic night, and narratives that unfold across multiple timelines or perspectives.