Product Description

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #13025 in Books
• Published on: 2009-08-18
• Released on: 2009-08-18
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 400 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780312379087
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

Amazon.com Review
Book Description
Nick Heller is tough, smart, and stubborn. And in his line of work, it's essential. Trained in the Special Forces, Nick is a high-powered intelligence investigator--exposing secrets that powerful people would rather keep hidden. He's a guy you don't want to mess with. He's also the man you call when you need a problem fixed.

Desperate, with nowhere else to run, Nick's nephew, Gabe makes that call one night. After being attacked in Georgetown, his mother, Lauren, lies in a coma, and his step-dad, Roger, Nick's brother, has vanished without a trace.

Nick and Roger have been on the outs since the arrest, trial, and conviction of their father, the notorious "fugitive financier," Victor Heller. Where Nick strayed from the path, Roger followed their father's footsteps into the corporate world. Now, as Nick searches for his brother, he's on a collision course with one of the most powerful corporations in the world--and they will stop at nothing to protect their secrets.

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Amazon Exclusive Essay: Joseph Finder on Finding a Hero for Vanished

A few years ago I was in London on book tour when I got a call from one of my best sources, a senior CIA operative involved in some really secret covert operations. He said he was in London too and wondered if I was free for dinner. There was someone he wanted me to meet.

I hadn't talked to my CIA friend--I'll call him James--in a few years, so I was glad to hear from him. I always enjoyed talking with him. Over the years he'd learned to trust my discretion (I never burn my sources) and--since I write fiction instead of reporting for the New York Times or something--he knew he could tell me things he could never tell a journalist.

I didn't ask how James had gotten my cell phone number. Or how he knew I was in London. I figured that, in his line of work, he just knew stuff.

When I got to the fancy restaurant in Mayfair, I found James sitting in a booth in the shadowed recesses with some very well dressed Arab-looking guy.

This guy wouldn't tell me his name. All he'd say was that he was an arms dealer from a certain Middle Eastern country. It took a while, and several bottles of expensive Bordeaux, but he started talking. And the stories he told me about how the international arms trade really worked, at the highest levels, blew me away. It was as if there was this whole subterranean world where terrifying things happen and decisions are made that affect us all, by faceless men whose existence we know nothing about.

Later, when I thanked James for getting us together, I asked him how things were going at the Agency. And that was when I got the biggest surprise of the evening: James wasn't working at the CIA anymore. He'd gone private. Now he was doing the same sort of spy work that he used to do, only for a lot more money. He worked for corporations and politicians and foreign governments. In fact, sometimes he even worked for the CIA, as an outside contractor.

But now, since he was no longer constrained by pesky U.S. government laws, he could actually do more. Go places that were once off limits. Do things he wasn't able to do before. He was an international investigator for a private intelligence firm.

He was a private spy.

And when I heard that, I knew I'd just found the hero of my next book. My first series hero, in fact: a character who could come back in novel after novel. My own Jason Bourne or James Bond--only he'd fit right in with the real-world corporate intrigue that readers really seemed to respond to in my novels like Paranoia and Killer Instinct and Power Play. But he could also do some really amazing spy stuff. He could be an action hero, but my sort of action hero--smart, connected, funny, real.

I named him Nick Heller, and I decided to introduce him to the world in a very personal, very high-stakes adventure in which he delves into his own troubled family history and, at the same time, digs up some very scary stuff about what really happens behind the scenes in Washington, D.C.

You'll meet him prowling around a private airport outside of L.A., where he's been hired to locate a missing shipment of enormous value. You'll meet his evil father, Victor, who's in prison in upstate New York for a massive investment fraud. And his fourteen-year-old nephew Gabe, who's kind of "emo" (as my daughter would say) but actually pretty cool. And I'm pretty sure you'll be astonished by what he finds at the end of the story.

I think you'll enjoy spending time with Nick. I know I did.

Oh, and that arms dealer I met in London? He'll be showing up in one of the Nick Heller stories soon.

From Publishers Weekly
Known for his stand-alones, bestseller Finder (Power Play) introduces Nick Heller, an elite corporate intelligence specialist and former Special Services badass, in this exciting series opener. After a frantic call from his 14-year-old nephew, Gabe, Heller returns home to Washington, D.C., from a job in California to find Gabe's mother in a coma and Gabe's stepfather, Roger, who is Heller's older brother, vanished without a trace. Though the brothers have been estranged since their father's much-publicized securities fraud conviction years earlier, Nick vows to protect Gabe and his mother and unravel the mystery of Roger's alleged abduction. The investigation leads him to some disturbing revelations about Roger, not the least of which involves a powerful—and dangerous—private military company. Written in staccato chapters that are emotionally supercharged and action packed, this thriller will more than satisfy adrenaline junkies and have them guessing until the very end. (Aug.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From The Washington Post
From The Washington Post's Book World/washingtonpost.com Reviewed by Maureen Corrigan The opening scene of Joseph Finder's new novel is a humdinger. Late one rainy evening, a middle-aged couple, Lauren and Roger Heller, walk back to their Mercedes after a mediocre evening at a Georgetown sushi restaurant. Just as they reach a deserted stretch of Water Street, Roger realizes he's left his car keys at the restaurant and sprints back to get them. Left alone in the darkness, Lauren is suddenly attacked from behind. She scuffles with her assailant and, somehow, the noise reaches the retreating Roger. The last thing Lauren hears before she falls victim to a serious concussion is the voice of her husband, shouting the cryptic words, "Why her?" If, as a reader, you attempt to make sense of the plot that follows -- a plot that has more twists and folds in it than the human small intestine -- you, too, may feel as woozy as Lauren does upon awakening in the hospital two days later. Finder writes in the rat-a-tat, short-chapters-always-ending-with-a-cliffhanger style perfected by Dan Brown in "The Da Vinci Code." Sometimes, though, in the service of conjuring up those boffo endings, Finder's plot doesn't add up; even worse, he occasionally doesn't play fair with the reader. (For instance, right before the attack we hear Lauren muse to herself about how much "she loved and admired" her husband; the truth -- at least the truth as it's revealed midway through the novel -- is somewhat messier.) Irritating, but not a deal breaker. This is a thriller to enjoy for its Washington locales, convincing familiarity with cutting-edge spy gadgetry and taut action scenes. If you're looking for logic, read Kant. When Lauren comes to, she learns that Roger has disappeared. Enter our hero, Roger's estranged brother, Nick. While Roger followed in their father's footsteps and became a financial wizard with that cool Mercedes and a nice mansion in Chevy Chase, Nick served in the Special Forces in Iraq and now works as an operative for a corporate espionage firm. Quick with his gun finger and with a hoary Dan Quayle joke, Nick is a likable tough guy who can justifiably boast that "after five years of working the dark side of Washington, D.C., both in the government and out . . . I knew someone in just about every three-letter government agency." Before this tale ends, most of those contacts are tapped as Nick scrambles to protect both Lauren and his slacker teenage nephew from sadistic mercenaries while racing to find out the real reason behind Roger's vanishing act. Any thriller that uses Dean & Deluca's celebrated chocolate chip cookies as an investigatory tool deserves kudos for cleverness. What "Vanished" lacks in narrative coherence, it makes up for in invention.
Copyright 2009, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.

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Customer Reviews

Okay, I did not see THAT coming...
What the hell has Roger Heller gotten himself into? Vanished, the latest thriller from Joe Finder opens with an attack on Lauren and Roger Heller as they are leaving a Georgetown restaurant. Lauren wakes up more than 24 hours later, badly concussed. Of Roger, there is no sign. In the interim, their 14-year-old son, Gabe, has called in his uncle, Nick, for help. It is Nick Heller, brother of Roger, who Finder is setting up to be the hero of a new series of novels.

He's made a good choice. Born to a life of extreme wealth--all of which was lost in a scandal--Nick gave up the pursuit of cash and joined the armed forces. Now he works as a private investigator for a high-end DC firm. He's tough, charismatic, and extremely competent. Nick Heller strikes me as a character that could go over equally well with both men and women.

Nick and Roger haven't been close in years, but Nick can't leave his only brother's disappearance entirely in the hands of the DC police. He begins his own investigation, while at the same time continuing to look into loose threads from his last work case. The deeper he digs into each, the more convoluted these two cases become. And the more enemies he seems to acquire.

Occasionally I thought I knew where Finder was going with his story, and occasionally I was right. More often I was wrong. A couple times I was completely stunned by a plot development. Joe Finder is definitely more clever than I am. Nick Heller is also more clever than I am, and the man really knows how to throw a punch. Fight scenes in the book were unusually interesting and well-written. Additionally, take it from a native Washingtonian that the DC setting was used with specificity and authenticity. (And observations like, "Washington, D.C., is to lying what Hershey, Pennsylvania, is to chocolate" made me smile.) Plenty of details that ring true do a lot to sell the whole story.

These days, I've got a litmus test for thrillers: Can I read it in a single day? Because it has relatively little to do with how many pages or how fast I read. It's all about a novel holding my interest for hours on end. Vanished passed with flying colors. It's not Finder's strongest work, but it's a good start to a new series.

Finder Fan Finds This One Faulty
Nick Heller is a special investigator for a D.C. firm. He takes on the toughest cases. He gets a call from his nephew, Gabe, telling him that Gabe's father, Roger Heller, has been abducted and his mother has been knocked unconscious. Nick drops his current investigation involving a billion dollar heist from the U.S. military to try to find out what has happened to Gabe's parents. Roger is Heller's older brother that he has a difficult relationship with.

Why is there no blood at the crime scene? Where is the body of Heller's brother? Was he killed? Was he kidnapped? These are the questions that keep the reader turning the pages.

Unfortunately as the pages turn there are more and more ridiculous things happening that strain credibility. For example one of the best detectives in the D.C. police department doesn't think to check all of the security cameras in the area of the abduction. Heller has techie friends at work that are willing to risk their careers, face danger, and possible jail time to help Heller satisfy his hunches. There are many more silly things that the reader has to let slide to enjoy the story.

I have read several of Finder's books. This one doesn't have the sense of humor or the business sense of his other books. It just doesn't measure up to Mr. Finder's previous efforts.

"See, that's my problem...I get my hooks into something, I can't stop"

The thriller genre is hip-deep in strong, resourceful men with murky pasts and hearts of gold. Some of these men are "keepers," breaking your heart from time to time but really always there for you. I won't infuriate anyone by naming a few and leaving out your favorites, but I think my first was John D. MacDonald's "beach bum" Travis McGee (if you don't count Frank and Joe Hardy, who technically didn't have the murky past).

Best-selling author Joseph Finder has until now populated his books with regular people from the corporate world, but Vanished (Nick Heller) is the debut of a new guy in town. According to his Twitter page (I'm not making this up), Nick Heller describes himself as "Intelligence investigator, security consultant, fixer, ex-military. Knows where the bodies are buried." Something tells me that the Nick Heller franchise is going to be a big deal in the genre. Don't miss this chance to get in at the beginning!

In this debut thriller, Heller's brother Roger vanishes late at night in Washington, DC, and his wife Lauren is assaulted. Heller gets pulled in by his step-nephew, Gabe, a graphic-novelist with a murky past ... well, no, but he's a terrific mix of teen angst and a heart of gold. The roots of the case lie in big-corporation misdeeds and become entangled with Heller's top-drawer investigative firm. I don't have to tell you that everyone owes Heller a favor and he can command any investigative resource with a speed-dial phone call. The man is fearless! His willingness to walk into the jaws of the enemy will amaze and impress you.

But don't for a minute think that Nick Heller is a two-dimensional superhero. "Vanished" weaves just enough personal history into the story to make him surprisingly plausible; there is a father in prison for corporate fraud, early years of wealth that left Nick impervious to its appeal but his brother Roger insatiable for more. Finder's style and pace are flawless; if you've read his earlier books (Power Play, Killer Instinct, and Company Man among them) you already know how well he writes, and how plausibly he portrays a dark side to corporate power. The only thing we could have wished for was a continuing character, and now we have him in Nick Heller. I can't wait to see what Finder gives us next in this series! There is already audio and I hear that we may get a look at young Gabe's graphic novels, which feature (surprise!) a hero modeled on Uncle Nick. Can a movie be far behind?

Get your hands on this smart, readable five-star thriller and get ready to turn the pages until you reach the satisfying conclusion.

Linda Bulger, 2009