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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.
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.
1.
LOS ANGELES
It was a dark and stormy night.
Actually, it wasn’t stormy. But it was dark and rainy and miserable and, for L.A., pretty damned cold. I stood in the drizzle at eleven o’clock at night, under the sickly yellow light from the high-pressure sodium lamps, wearing a fleece and jeans that were soaking wet and good leather shoes that were in the process of getting destroyed.
I’d had the shoes handmade in London for some ridiculous amount of money, and I made a mental note to bill my employer, Stoddard Associates, for the damage, just on general principle.
I hadn’t expected rain. Though, as a putatively high-powered international investigator with a reputation for being able to see around corners, I supposed I could have checked Weather.com.
"That’s the one," the man standing next to me grunted, pointing at a jet parked a few hundred feet away. He was wearing a long yellow rain slicker with a hood—he hadn’t offered me one back in the office—and his face was concealed by shadows. All I could see was his bristly white mustache.
Elwood Sawyer was the corporate security director of Argon Express Cargo, a competitor of DHL and FedEx, though a lot smaller. He wasn’t happy to see me, but I couldn’t blame him. I didn’t want to be here myself. My boss, Jay Stoddard, had sent me here at the last minute to handle an emergency for a new client I’d never heard of.
An entire planeload of cargo had vanished sometime in the last twenty-four hours. Someone had cleaned out one of their planes at this small regional airport south of L.A. Twenty thousand pounds of boxes and envelopes and packages that had arrived the previous day from Brussels. Gone.
You couldn’t even begin to calculate the loss. Thousands of missing packages meant thousands of enraged customers and lawsuits up the wazoo. A part of the shipment belonged to one customer, Traverse Development Group, which had hired my firm to locate their cargo. They were urgent about it, and they weren’t going to rely on some second-string cargo company to find it for them.
But the last thing Elwood Sawyer wanted was some high-priced corporate investigator from Washington, D.C., standing there in a pair of fancy shoes telling him how he’d screwed up.
The cargo jet he was pointing at stood solitary and dark and rain-slicked, gleaming in the airfield lights. It was glossy white, like all Argon cargo jets, with the company’s name painted across the fuselage in bold orange Helvetica. It was a Boeing 727, immense and magnificent.
An airplane up close is a thing of beauty. Much more awe-inspiring than the view from inside when you’re trapped with the seat of the guy in front of you tilted all the way back, crushing your knees. The jet was one of maybe twenty planes parked in a row on the apron nearby. Some of them, I guessed, were there for the weekend, some for the night, since the control tower closed at ten o’clock. There were chocks under their wheels and traffic cones around each one denoting the circle of safety.
"Let’s take a look inside, Elwood," I said.
Sawyer turned to look at me. He had bloodshot basset-hound eyes with big saggy pouches beneath them.
"Woody," he said. He was correcting me, not trying to be friends.
"Okay. Woody."
"There’s nothing to see. They cleaned it out." In his right hand he clutched one of those aluminum clipboards in a hinged box, the kind that truck drivers and cops always carry around.
"Mind if I take a look anyway? I’ve never seen the inside of a cargo plane."
"Mr. Keller—"
"Heller."
"Mr. Keller, we didn’t hire you, and I don’t have time to play tour guide, so why don’t you go back to interviewing the ground crew while I try to figure out how someone managed to smuggle three truckloads of freight out of this airport without anyone noticing?"
He turned to walk back to the terminal, and I said, "Woody, look. I’m not here to make you look bad. We both want the same thing—to find the missing cargo. I might be able to help. Two heads are better than one, and all that."
He kept walking. "Uh-huh. Well, that’s real thoughtful, but I’m kinda busy right now."
"Okay. So . . . Mind if I use your name?" I said.
He stopped, didn’t turn around. "For what?"
"My client’s going to ask for a name. The guy at Traverse Development can be a vindictive son of a bitch." Actually, I didn’t even know who at Traverse had hired my firm.
Woody didn’t move.
"You know how these guys work," I said. "When I tell my client how Argon Express wasn’t interested in any outside assistance, he’s going to ask me for a name. Maybe he’ll admire your independent spirit—that go-it-alone thing. Then again, maybe he’ll just get pissed off so bad that they’ll just stop doing business with you guys. No big deal to them. Then word gets around. Like maybe you guys were covering something up, right? Maybe there’s the threat of a huge lawsuit. Pretty soon, Argon Express goes belly-up. And all because of you."
Woody still wasn’t moving, but I could see his shoulders start to slump. The back of his yellow slicker was streaked with oil and grime.
"But between you and me, Woody, I gotta admire you for having the guts to tell Traverse Development where to get off. Not too many people have the balls to do that."
Woody turned around slowly. I don’t think I’d ever seen anyone blink so slowly and with such obvious hostility. He headed toward the plane, and I followed close behind.
THERE WAS a hydraulic hum, and the big cargo door came open like the lift gate on a suburban minivan. Woody was standing in the belly of the plane. He gestured me inside with a weary flip of his hand.
He must have switched on an auxiliary power unit because the lights inside the plane were on, a series of naked bulbs in wire cages mounted on the ceiling. The interior was cavernous. You could see the rails where the rows of seats used to be. Just a black floor marked with red lines where the huge cargo containers were supposed to go, only there were no containers here. White windowless walls lined with some kind of papery white material.
I whistled. Totally bare. "The plane was full when it flew in?"
"Mmm-hmm. Twelve igloos."
" ‘Igloos’ are the containers, right?"
He walked over to the open cargo door. The rain was thrumming against the plane’s aluminum skin. "Look for yourself."
A crew was loading another Argon cargo jet right next to us. They worked in that unhurried, efficient manner of a team that had done this a thousand times before. A couple of guys were pushing an immense container, eight or ten feet high and shaped like a child’s drawing of a house, from the back of a truck onto the steel elevator platform of a K-loader. I counted seven guys. Two to push the igloo off the truck, two more to roll it onto the plane, another one to operate the K-loader. Two more guys whose main job seemed to be holding aluminum clipboards and shouting orders. The next jet down, another white Boeing but not one of theirs, was being refueled.
"No way you could get twelve containers off this plane without a crew of at least five," I said. "Tell me something. This plane got in yesterday, right? What took you so long to unload it?"
He sighed exasperatedly. "International cargo has to be inspected by U.S. Customs before we do anything. It’s the law."
"That takes an hour or two at most."
"Yeah, normally. Weekends, Customs doesn’t have the manpower. So they just cleared the crew to get off and go home. Sealed it up. Let it sit there until they had time to do an inspection."
"So while the plane was sitting here, anyone could have gotten inside. Looks like all the planes just sit here unattended all night. Anyone could climb into one."
"That’s the way it works in airports around the world, buddy. If you’re cleared to get onto the airfield, they figure you’re supposed to be here. It’s called the ‘honest-man’ system of security."
I chuckled. "That’s a good one. I gotta use it sometime."
Woody gave me a look.
I paced along the plane’s interior. There was a surprising amount of rust in the places where there was no liner or white paint. "How old is this thing?" I called out. My voice echoed. It seemed even colder in here than it was outside. The rain was pattering hypnotically on the plane’s exterior.
"Thirty years easy. They stopped making the Boeing seven-twos in 1984, but most of them were made in the sixties and seventies. They’re workhorses, I’m telling you. Long as you do the upkeep, they last forever."
"You guys buy ’em used or new?"
"Used. Everyone does. FedEx, DHL, UPS—we all buy used planes. It’s a lot cheaper to buy an old passenger plane and have it converted into a cargo freighter."
"What does one of these cost?"
"Why? You thinking of going into the business?"
"Everyone has a dream."
He looked at me. It took him a few seconds to get that I was being sarcastic. "You can get one of these babies for three hundred thousand bucks. There’s hundreds of them sitting in airplane boneyards in the desert. Like used-car lots."
I walked to the front of the plane. Mounted to the doorframe was the data plate, a small stainless-steel square the size of a cigarette pack. Every plane has one. They’re riveted on by the manufacturer, and they’re sort of like birth certificates. This one said THE BOEING COMPANY—COMMERCIAL AIRPLANE DIVISION—RENTON, WASHINGTON, and it listed the year of manufacture (1974) and a bunch of other numbers: the model and the serial number and so on.
I pulled out a little Maglite and looked closer and saw just what I expected to see.
I stepped back out onto the air stairs, the cold rain spritzing my face, and I reached out and felt the slick painted fuselage. I ran my hand over the Argon Express logo, felt something. A ridge. The paint seemed unusually thick.
Woody was watching me from a few feet away. My fingers located the lower left corner of the two-foot-tall letter A.
"You don’t paint your logo on?" I asked.
"Of course it’s painted on. What the hell—?"
It peeled right up. I tugged some more, and the entire logo—some kind of adhesive vinyl sticker—began to lift off.
"Check out the data plate," I said. "It doesn’t match the tail number."
"That’s—that’s impossible!"
"They didn’t just steal the cargo, Woody. They stole the whole plane."
Excerpted from Vanished by Joseph Finder.
Copyright 2009 by Joseph Finder.
Published in August 2009 by St. Martin’s Press.
All rights reserved. This work is protected under copyright laws and reproduction is strictly prohibited. Permission to reproduce the material in any manner or medium must be secured from the Publisher.
Joseph Finder - the talented author of such novels as "High Crimes" and "The Moscow Club" - enters the arena of the continuing-character series with the introduction of Nick Heller in his latest offering "Vanished".
Nick Heller's an ex-Special Forces veteran of Bosnia and Iraq, with unique skills he now uses as an investigator for an executive-level "consulting" firm that specializes in solving "problems" for major corporations and other elite clients.
Nick's older brother Roger has vanished, the apparent victim of a crime in which Roger's wife Lauren was beaten into a near coma. When summoned by a frantic phone call from Lauren's son Gabe, Nick determines to find his brother at all costs, and as he delves into the case he finds himself exploring a labyrinthine conspiracy involving massive sums of money embezzled from the war zone, corporate takeovers, and the world of modern day mercenary soldiers also known as "civilian contractors".
Nick's a good character for a series: charming, just the right amount of insolence, and tough enough to do the job. He's somewhat along the lines of Elvis Cole, without the Joe Pike backup. I look forward to following his further adventures.
But there were a few problems with this book that prevent that fifth star.
First of all, the "conspiracy" was just a tad TOO involved and intricate, making it hard to follow through the story, and a bit outside the credibility limits, at least for me. Too many of the characters were hard to keep straight without a scorecard. I kept finding myself going: "Huh? Which guy was this again?".
When we find out about the involvement of one of the characters (can't be more specific without revealing a major spoiler), it was so glossed over - especially as to consequences for that character - that it was a major dissonance.
But in many cases, first entries of continuing series aren't the best, as the characters (and style) develop over time in subsequent books. The first Bob Lee Swagger novel ("Point of Impact") is very different from his later - and more refined - efforts. The same can be said of the Jack Reacher, Elvis Cole, Mitch Rapp, Lucas Davenport, and Harry Bosch novels.
So, good entertainment, looking forward to more of this character, a solid four stars.
10 out of 10 people found this review helpful.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.Joseph Finder did follow the hero rulebook with the creation of Nick Heller:
Special Forces background (check)
Troubled childhood (check)
Has trouble with authority (check)
Can punch his way out of a situation (check)
Loner (check)
Cracks cynical jokes when a pistol is pointed at his face (check)
Tough guy with a good heart (check)
What sets Nick Heller apart from the others is that Finder places him in a business environment (Heller is a corporate investigator). Heller isn't fighting against a corrupt politician with his own personal agenda or terrorists groups whose goals are to tear down the government. No, Nick Heller isn't scuffling with Bob the accountant, tossing paperclips at each other in the break room either--that would have been boring. Heller does face off with well-trained, well-armed private security personnel and must locate the individuals responsible for the abduction his older brother.
There's plenty of action, suspense, good humor and mystery to satisfy everyone. The book is a quick read and Heller is a likable character. I'm looking forward to reading the further adventures of Nick Heller.
4 out of 4 people found this review helpful.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.Anonymous
Posted January 2, 2010
I have read all of the Joseph Finder novels and am a huge Jack Reacher fan. Nick Heller, the protagonist, is right up there with the best. This is a very enjoyable escapist read with a terrific hero in Nick Heller. There is a neat twist to the plot and it appears Heller will feature in future books.
Vanished and Power Play are two of his best books and will give several hours of pleasure to its readers.
2 out of 2 people found this review helpful.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.SHARON39
Posted December 8, 2009
I Also Recommend:
I don't usually read this kind of book but I started the first few pages out of curiosity. I was immediately captivated with the storyline and couldn't stop reading. I enjoyed the Washington, D.C. background because I live near there and it kept my heart pounding as I tetered on the edge of my seat all the way through. Fascinating facts along the way...great imagination....Finder is a terrific writer! Well worth your time!
Another book I thoroughly enjoyed recently, but it's more of a woman's book, but just as suspenseful and exciting, is EXPLOSION IN PARIS by PIRRUNG. Another book well worth your time!! EXPLOSION IN PARIS
2 out of 2 people found this review helpful.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.Best Finder novel yet. Compelling, fast moving. Kept me turning the page far into the night. Full of action and suspense. You'll think you know what is coming next. However, it twists and turns and you guess wrong. The secrets keep piling up and it actually makes the pulse pound. Excellent thriller.
2 out of 2 people found this review helpful.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.Top notch reading for any mystery buff & I just couldn't sit this down on the last 150 pages or so. Lots of twists & turns and some very good character development. Written in 1st person narrative and is an exciting read with good action... tops Power Play IMHO by a small a margin, nice start to a series...
2 out of 2 people found this review helpful.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.Anonymous
Posted June 1, 2011
Usually I can figure out who did it at least half-way through the book. With this one, I was surprised time and time again. I definitely want to get the next book that has Nick Heller as the good guy trying to figure out what in the world is going on. I loved that he was so concerned about his brother's family and was willing to do anything to help them, even when the plot thickened and some of the family was more involved than expected. This is my first book of Joseph Finder and I will probably read more of his books as time goes on.
1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
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Posted January 13, 2011
Modern Agatha Christie that has you analyzing each step and doesn't reveal anything more than what the main character knows. Keeps you trying to ffigure out the end game up till the last pages. Hope to see Nick Heller again. NewPortlandFan
1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
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Posted August 29, 2010
Last Sunday, I shared with you a series of novels I thought would make you laugh and cringe at the same time. This week I have a novel for you that have recently been released in paperback, Joseph Finder's Vanished. To say I am a fan is an understatement. I have read all his novels and always look forward to the next. So, if you wish, click off here, thinking I am a homer, see you tomorrow, maybe. Me being the Yankees fan I was raised to be, always can find something wrong with things in Boston,haha.
Vanished is an absorbing read. I am consistently amazed by the element of detail that Joseph Finder adds to his novels. It sets him apart from others in the genre and he seems to raise his game with each new novel. The plot line of Vanished has us experiencing the collision of three fractured, damaged people, in a father and his two sons. The force and speed to which Finder narrates the story puts them on a course that would seemingly find them in an atom smasher. I personally enjoyed the whole thing. Reading about a fast moving train wreck and being an innocent bystander isn't a bad thing when there are no real life fatalities.
I am hard pressed to name more than a handful of authors that are in Joseph Finders stratus in this genre. Getting a novel of his that one has not read is truly a pleasure. If you haven't discovered him for whatever reason, do yourself a favor and pick up any of his many titles. Here are a few: Paranoia, Power Play, Killer Instinct, Company Man, No Hiding Place. I don't hesitate to say to put them in your Goodreads or Shelfari -to read - lists. FYI- for Finder fans , if you didn't know, he is one of the contributing authors of a short story to the Agents of Treachery novel that was recently released. You can check our archives for my thoughts on that. Joseph Finder's newest novel, Buried Secrets, is due out in the spring of 2011, which I look forward to reading.
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1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.blueskyes
Posted October 17, 2009
I Also Recommend:
When I read the synopsis I was totally intrigued. I thought it would be a page turner, but I was wrong. The plot is interesting. If you're into politics and gov't conspiracies it's a good book. The main character is funny and kicks ass. I was constanyly guessing what would would happen next, but I was usually wrong. I'm not sure if that's good or bad. There is no sexual content, which was a let down (that was one thing I was anticipating). The relationships were interesting.
1 out of 3 people found this review helpful.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.Alla_S
Posted September 8, 2009
In Joseph Finder's new book "Vanished," the thriller focuses around Roger Heller and his mysterious disappearance during which his wife Lauren is injured, and following which his brother Nick Heller gets asked by Lauren's teenage son Gabe to investigate. The writing is engaging and the protagonist Nick Heller is a strong character comparable to James Bond-including his penchant for the latest technologies, dangerous situations, and martial arts techniques. What's particularly interesting about the writing is Finder switching from Nick's first person narration, to third person narration surrounding characters like Lauren, Gabe, and Roger's ex co-worker Marjorie. This interesting writing technique, however, is essential to the plot as the reader soon discovers that Nick is really the only trustworthy character in the book. The story line itself successfully builds up throughout the book, as Nick investigates the corrupt business practices of a company linked to the government, an unexpected murder occurs with one of the characters, a car explosion threatens Nick's entire plans, and the one person who might help him is not whom he seems. In fact, with the exception of the protagonist, all of the characters are hiding something which makes this read particularly satisfying. Much of the action is focused around Washington D.C., and characters who are wealthy but often illegally so-such as Nick's and Roger's father Victor Heller who's in jail and among the dark personalities dominating the story. The theme itself is reflective of modern struggles between self-interest and doing the right thing, which creates tension in every scene. Is Lauren really telling Nick everything she knows? Did Roger become a victim knowingly? Are Gabe's and his mother's lives in danger because of their actions? This theme particularly climaxes towards the end of the book, when the chilling truth comes out. Overall, I found this book is a page turner with solid writing and a strong plot that certainly rivals today's movie thrillers.
1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.International corporate security expert Nick Heller is the best at his job. He currently is in California searching for containers filled with billions of dollars taken in Iraq, but stops in his tracks when his fourteen year old nephew Gabe calls hysterically from DC. The kid's stepfather, Nick's brother Roger has vanished and his mother Lauren is in a coma.
Nick rushes home though he and Roger are not on talking terms since their father was convicted of securities fraud. Nick knows his first priority is to the teen and his mom, but also begins inquiries into his missing brother. He begins to fear his brother was involved in some nasty stuff that threatens his family and apparently ties back to their incarcerated father as well as a dangerous mercenary-for-hire company.
VANISHED is a fast-paced, action filled thriller that never takes a breather once Gabe contacts his uncle. Nick drops everything to keep his nephew and his comatose sister-in-law safe while searching for his vanished estranged brother, whom he assumes initially, was abducted, but begins to reconsider his premise as he uncovers clues. Filled with plausible exhilarating twists, readers will find themselves dropping everything to finish this book in one sitting.
Harriet Klausner
1 out of 4 people found this review helpful.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.This was the 1st Joseph Finder book I read. It started out slow but as i read more it started getting better. It got to a point I couldn't stop reading it. I did go and buy another book by him....Buried Secrets.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.Anonymous
Posted January 19, 2012
I will definitely be following this author.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.Anonymous
Posted December 31, 2011
Couldn't make up my mind what type of story this was. If it was action Flynn and Thor do it better. If it was process, DeMille. If it was if it was plot stick with Berry. Ending left me NOT wanting more.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.Anonymous
Posted December 30, 2011
i think this was one of his best
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.Santa_Cruz_Gal
Posted August 14, 2011
I enjoyed this book and look forward to other books by this author.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.carbs_reader
Posted July 24, 2011
Welcome to the world of Nick Heller, and enjoy the ride. Great way to open a series. Looking forward to downloading the second one. Non-stop action with several twists.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.I have to admit, books based in my hometown of Washington DC gives me a sense of connection with the characters. I am thrilled to have discover Nick Keller. He could be the down to earth guy that lives across the street. He is street smart in all the right ways. This adventure was filled with twists and turns and I loved how the authur kept expanding the plot to keep you engrossed. The writer was very clever how he lntertwined these complex characters into a story about corruption, government secrets and money, the root of all evil. Hollywood producers should read more books, this would be great movie material. Wyvongela
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Posted June 20, 2011
Loved it! Pleasantly surprised for such a cheap buy! Will definitely buy more from this author now that I discovered him!
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Overview
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 ...