Vanished

Joseph Finder

2009 • 396 pages

Ratings13

Average rating3.6

Starred Review. Finder (Power Play) offers a rousing start to a new series featuring Nick Heller, a high-powered international investigator and corporate security consultant. Through a brilliant piece of detection, Heller has just tracked down 12 cargo containers packed with $1 billion in cash when he gets a call from his nephew Gabe in Washington, DC. Heller's brother Roger, the kid's stepfather, has vanished, and the boy's mother, Lauren, is in the hospital, the victim of a late-night attack. Both Roger and Lauren work for Gifford Industries, a multibillion-dollar corporation where Roger mostly handled mergers and acquisitions. Was he kidnapped, or did he disappear of his own volition? Is there a connection to the cash, part of $12 billion in U.S. funds that went missing in Iraq? And what about their father, a notorious financier imprisoned for securities fraud? Using his Special Forces skills and the latest high-tech wizardry, Heller counters lethal adversaries as he peels back layers of secrets that hide not only high-level corporate crimes but the troubled affairs of his own family. Cliffhangers galore, the fascinating tradecraft of corporate espionage, and an engrossing story will propel readers through this outstanding thriller. Highly recommended as a great summer read. [A 200,000-copy first printing; promotional tie-in to an original graphic novel.Ed.]Ron Terpening, Univ. of Arizona, Tuscon Copyright Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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4 primary books6 released books

#1 in Nick Heller

Nick Heller is a 6-book series with 4 released primary works first released in 2009 with contributions by Joseph Finder and Lee Child.

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Good and Valuable Consideration: Jack Reacher vs. Nick Heller

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Jason

Pretty good. Nick Heller is different enough from Jack Reacher not to be a clone, which is nice. Lots of twists. Only complaint is that the voice the narrator did for Gabriel was kind of annoying and not great.

February 11, 2023

hc.newton

I lost sleep over this one. Literally. I had to force myself to put this thing down so I could get a little shut-eye. Which wasn't easy. After about 70 pages or so, I realized two things very clearly: I was hooked on this book and was going to have to get the next one in the series very soon. Neither feeling went away.

Last year, when I read FaceOff, the Jack Reacher/Nick Heller story was probably my favorite, so when I found myself wandering the library last week with every thing on my “to get list” unavailable, I figured I'd finally give a full-length Heller story a try. Clearly, one of the better moves I've made.

Nick Heller is former Army Special Ops, turned corporate espionage hotshot. His estranged brother, Roger, is abducted (at best) leaving an injured wife behind. His nephew, Gabe, freaks out and calls his uncle for help, not willing to trust the police. So Nick, with “a very particular set of skills,” starts looking for his brother.

Heller's similar to Reacher, but has more of a cerebral approach to things. I'm not sure that's necessarily fair, maybe it's that he takes a less direct approach to Reacher's bull in a china shop approach. That's not quite it, either. There's something similar, yet very distinctive about their approaches. It's more than just the fact that Heller has money and resources (and friends and family . . . ), while Reacher has a fresh set of clothes, a new toothbrush and whatever weapon he can take off a foe. Heller definitely has a better sense of humor – and a cell phone, maybe that's it.

Heller definitely has to work – suffers some real investigative setbacks, is flat-out wrong on several fronts, blunders a bit, and has to go through some real emotional hardship. Making him human enough to really engage the reader (in a way that Reacher never can – not that I want to keep comparing the two).

Well paced, intelligent, some cool spycraft, some good fight scenes and a lot less gunplay than you'd expect – this is a thriller well worth your time.