Customer Reviews

Vanished

5 star:		(67)
4 star:		(51)
3 star:		(17)
2 star:		(13)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

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.

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.

Joe Finder's novel Vanished, the first in a new series, features Nick Heller as an ex-Special Forces guy who works at a high-end private detective agency in Washington, D.C. He and his brother Roger grew up in opulence, but the chauffeured rides to school ended when their father became the Kenneth Lay of his era. His arrest caused a rift between the once inseparable brothers. In this debut, Nick is finishing up an investigation into a plane-load of stolen money when he learns from Roger's stepson, Gabe, that Roger and his wife Lauren have been attacked in Georgetown. Lauren is in the hospital and Roger has disappeared. Trying to locate his brother and figure out what prompted the attack leads Nick into some seriously dangerous situations, many of them involving the burly, thick-necked employees of a Blackwater-type private security firm.

Nick Heller is the sort of character I enjoy in a thriller: we don't learn much about his softer side, it's true--there's time for that in subsequent installments in the series--but he's ultra-competent and quick on his feet. The plot of Finder's book is, I suppose, admirable in its intricacy, but I confess that, having just finished reading it, I'd be hard-pressed to tell you exactly what was going on. Nick uncovered various plots centered on his brother. People we thought were uninvolved were in fact complicit. It was all a bit too complicated. And some specific incidents left me wondering: Why was someone going around gouging out people's eyeballs? I don't know! How was Nick able to stealthily carry a stepladder around a military complex in the middle of the night? (Especially the part where he pulled the ladder up through a window after himself with guards relatively nearby. Surely that would make a lot of noise.)

I wouldn't doubt that my problem with the plot is my fault rather than a failure of the book: more attentive readers than I may not have a problem with it. But while I've found Finder's earlier novels gripping, this one never grabbed my attention or got me invested in the characters.

-- Debra Hamel

Start with the author's acknowledgments at the end of this book, and you'll get a sense of the complexity of this story and the extent of the research he conducted. Like many of Finder's other novels, "Vanished" is an accomplished thriller -- a proverbial page-turner that uses all the tricks of the writer's craft to draw the reader from one minuscule chapter to the next. (There are 99 chapters in this book.)

Unfortunately, unlike other of Finder's novels that I've read, this book is disappointingly flawed by what in the film industry would be tagged as egregious errors of continuity. These errors rob the story of its already marginal credibility, given the exaggerated competence of its hero, former Special Forces soldier and investigator par excellence, Nick Heller.

At one point, Heller refers to visiting his father in prison at a time he'd noted only a few pages earlier that the old man was in hiding overseas. There are other, lesser slipups as well, and if these were the only flaws in the story, I would be less disgruntled with the book. Unfortunately, in the story's climax, a large number of police officers show up to save the day mere minutes after having been called -- to a location at least half an hour away from their station.

I'd picked up this novel with great anticipation, having been enthralled with three of Finder's earlier thriller, all of them about industrial espionage. I'm hoping Finder is less sloppy in future efforts.

(From Mal Warwick's Blog on Books)

I love reading Joseph Finder's books because they are well written, well thought out and rely more on the cleverness of the plot than spectacular explovive scenes that some authors overuse. This book is no exception. I like Nick Heller as the new character for a series. Besides being smart, funny and extremely able, he seems real. This book has more than a few surprises and kept my interest from beginning to end. I can recommend it without reservation.

Nick Heller is ex-special forces. He finds out that his brother is missing and he goes into action and tries to find him and those who took him, will pay. Heller will make sure of that. That's pretty much all I want to say about the plot, because I don't want to give to much away.

As I said, overall, it was an okay read. Not great, not bad, just okay. I found a lot of the book predictable. I mean I saw things coming from a mile away.

The characters were okay. Nick Heller is being compared to Jack Reacher. That's a high order. Reacher is my favorite fictional character, and Heller isn't even close. It may not be fair to compare Heller to Reacher, but that's what people are doing, even Finder and Lee Child, the author of the Reacher books are doing it. I'd like to have seen Heller kick more butt than he did. That being said, when he did kick butt, he was pretty good at it, but he was no Reacher.

For me, Heller was to caught up in hi-tech spyware, and it lost me.

I thought that Finder tried to hard. This isn't his best work, and I've read worse by other authors.

If you're read all of the Jack Reacher books, and you're looking for something to read that sort of like Reacher, then give it a try. This is a good book if you're in between the Jack Reacher series. Reacher is still the man!

Overall, if you want to read it, I suggest you get it from a library. The odds are that I'll read the next one in the series, because you can't just judge a character from one book. That being said, I'll be getting it from the library.

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

After eight stand-alone books, and at least to this reader, a steady decline with each subsequent release, this author has started a series with Vanished and has hit rock bottom. The protagonist, Nick Heller, is ex-Army Special Services now working in the private sector. Nick is a very obvious and unfortunately, a very poor caricature of Lee Child's protagonist Jack Reacher.

While Reacher is a loner, Heller works alone until he needs help. Then he picks up his cell-phone, and much like reaching into a tool-box to find what he needs, dials a number - demolitions expert, computer genius, security expert - they're all one phone call away.

Heller also has a "biting wit". A cohort apologizes for waking Heller with her early morning phone call, Heller responds, "No problem. I had to get up to answer the phone anyway." There's a lot more side-splitting zany hilarity like this but I don' want to spoil it for you.

Heller can also become a one man army when necessary. Up against a Blackwater-like security/military firm, Heller decides to go right to the top and break into the CEO's isolated secure compound, for a one-on-one talk. After a little reconnaissance/surveillance, (sitting in his truck with binoculars), Heller comes up with a genius plan. He waits until after dark and then plants a few cell phones in the shrubbery. Now here's where it gets tricky - he then calls the planted phones, their ringing completely befuddles the top notch security guards and Nick waltzes right into the "secure" compound.

Again, I could go on with examples of such "intrigue" and "suspense", but hopefully the point is made.

I am just as guilty as the next person when it comes to enjoying a mindless escapist thriller but Vanished falls miserably short even of that categorization. This book makes the old A-Team TV show look complex and complicated in comparison. I haven't even bothered with the plot - it's minimal and predictable and simply not worth the effort - Pass on this one and find yourself a good thriller.

In Joseph Finder's novel "Vanished," someone attacks Lauren Heller while she and her husband, Roger, are out to dinner in Georgetown. Lauren hears Roger shout "Why her?" before she's knocked out. When she awakens in the hospital, she learns that Roger has disappeared.

Roger's brother, Nick, is a former Special Forces member who is an investigator for Stoddard Associates. As the story begins, he's just prevented the theft of a cargo from a plane at a regional airport near L.A. The cargo in question was a large amount of money.

Roger's son, Gabe, gets in touch with Nick and asks for help. Even though Nick and Roger haven't spoken in years, Nick is fond of Lauren and Gabe and he agrees to try to find Roger.

Roger's position is chief financial officer of Gifford Industires. He carries the burden of his father's crime. His and Nick's father is in jail for insider trading and securities fraud. Wanting to erase the memory of his father's crime, Roger has been extra diligent in his job.

As Nick investigates, he finds that there is a corporation similar to Blackwater Corporation. This corporation provides mercenaries and government security overseas. Much of their activities involve bribes to government officials. As Nick looks into this corporation, he finds military looking people following him. He also begins to find out things about Roger's past and it could even involve his father.

This is an intelligently written financial thriller. There is plenty of excieing action and Nick is an excellent character, somewhat in the style of Lee Child's protagonist, Jack Reacher.

Overall, I found the story to be cleverly plotted and suspenseful. I look forward to reading more of Nick Heller's exploits in future stories.

While it's impossible to begin Vanished and not race to the end, there are some problems with the character of Nick Heller, a man who seldom sleeps or eats, and who conjures up props at a moment's notice. During a crucial nighttime scene involving several disposable cell phones, he manages to dial one while never having to consult a scrap of paper. Nobody's memory is that good. Heller, a former special ops officer, is intelligent, efficient, resourceful, and determined, but he's less burdened by his humanity than he might perhaps be. He has no family loyalty except to his step-nephew. He never calls his mother. We're left with a one-dimensional man it's hard to develop affection for. I enjoyed the troubled nephew a good deal more. Granted, Heller has an unorthodox history and strained family ties, but his bitterness is unattractive. And if ever a book cried out for an epilogue, this one does. Those of us not members of the corporate culture need to know precisely what crimes were committed and by whom. We need to know what happened in the end. Since the beginning, I have been a fan of Joseph Finder's and I always will be, I expect, but I'm hoping for a more fleshed out protagonist the next time out in what promises to be a deservedly popular series.