Thu 3 Mar 2011
JOSEPH FINDER – Vanished. St. Martin’s Press, hardcover, August 2009; reprint paperback, August 2010.
Vanished is the first book in a new series by a writer who specializes in financial intrigue, and who has written several best selling roman a clef’s (The Moscow Club, Power Play) that benefited by prefiguring events that made the headlines across the world, and made his debut with a controversial non-fiction work, The Red Carpet, that exposed the ties of the KGB to American entrepreneur Armand Hammer..
Vanished introduces Finder’s first continuing character, Nick Heller, chief investigator and trouble shooter for Stoddard International and Jay Stoddard, its CEO. Heller is an ex-Special Forces type (de rigueur in today’s thrillers) replete with personal demons and a tough no-nonsense approach to his work.
If that echoes many of the heroes in today’s thriller fiction, what separates Finder from the pack is that he both can really write, and his plots dealing with corporate intrigue have the ring of truth.
The glamour of big business and ruthless corporate back fighting is nothing new in thrillers. John D. MacDonald frequently used shady business as a background in this thrillers as did Hammond Innes, and as have many writers including Michael Thomas, Thomas Gifford, and more recently Christopher Reich. For that matter Emma Lathen’s John Putnam Thatcher series gave us a banker sleuth in that cut-throat world — albeit with more than a dash of humor.
Heller proves to be a likable and believable protagonist. In his first outing the job he’s on for his boss gets pushed aside when his brother Roger disappears after Roger’s wife Lauren is nearly killed. Roger’s panicked teen age son calls on his uncle.
Nick and Roger have a complicated relationship — dating back to their childhood, and their father who is still in Federal prison for securities fraud and insider trading and has been since Nick was only thirteen. Roger followed in Dad’s footsteps — at least in regard to working in the financial world.
Heller proves a competent guide through the complexities of financial finagling as he pursues his brother — who may not want to be found — as well as a tough no nonsense fighter pitted against a variety of gun-waving types and a ruthless killer known as the Surgeon. Along the way he also grows closer to his nephew, Gabe, who reminds him of himself when confronted with the duplicities of the adult world.
Vanished is a fast read, written in short clipped, staccato chapters and clear prose that is refreshingly free of the jingoism, posing, and diatribes that crowd too many of today’s thrillers.
Finder is satisfied to tell a good story well and let the facts speak for themselves without undue editorializing, while still allowing Heller to emerge as a believable protagonist with a recognizable voice and manner.
I will admit I got to the solution before Heller did, but not by much, and less based on evidence than being overly familiar with thriller structure. It’s not a flaw of the book by any means, and it is a neat and simply explained scheme at the heart of the matter that even readers who think the Wall Street Journal and Financial Times might as well by written in Chinese will have no trouble following.
Heller admits he is channeling Batman as much as Philip Marlowe, but remains humanly tough and never cartoonishly so. Heller has been compared to Lee Child’s Jack Reacher, but I found him a much more believably human character.
Nick Heller proves a refreshingly bright and straightforward protagonist who even gets away with introducing himself with “It was a dark and stormy night.” You have to admire that kind of chutzpah from one of the more believably likable and competent thriller heroes I’ve encountered in some time, who manages to suffer from a complex background and angst without making the reader suffer through them as well.
Editorial Note: Buried Secrets (Nick Heller #2) will be published in hardcover this coming June.
March 4th, 2011 at 1:40 am
I’m fairly sure I bought this book in paperback late last year, but if I did, I never catalogued it into my collection. It’s one of those “premium-sized” paperbacks (sold at a premium price), so perhaps I looked at it for a while at Borders and put it back on the shelf.
If I did, it sounds as though that was my mistake, premium price or not.
Humor is strictly a personal thing. In Barry Gardner’s review of one of Emma Lathen’s books posted here recently, he implied that he didn’t find her nearly as funny as the blurb on the back cover suggested.
But when you use her mysteries as a point of comparison in this review, you say they contain “more than a dash of humor.”
I’m hijacking the comment away from Finder, I know, but I lean more your way (assuming I am reading Barry correctly). To my mind, the humor in Lathen’s books is very dry, witty and subtle, and lots of times if you’re looking the wrong way at one of them, you just might not see it.
March 4th, 2011 at 1:55 pm
The wit in Latham is dry — as befits a series about a banker, but it is there, and look at many of the subjects — the Latham’s have a very jaundiced even satirical eye toward business and some of their corporate enities border on satire of the broadest type.
I didn’t comment on Barry’s review since he isn’t around to defend it, but like you I always found the Latham books to be sly and often barbed in their humor albeit in a manner befitting her hero.
In some ways the Lathams remind me of books like I CAN GET IT FOR YOU WHOLESALE, HOW TO SUCCEED AT BUSINESS WITHOUT REALLY TRYING, or THE HUCKSTERS — business novels of the late forties, fifties, and early sixties that took a savage look at that world with a slightly dark humor and satire.
The Latham’s also reminded me a bit of Rex Stout who often took some broad shots at business and businessmen in otherwise straight forward Nero Wolfe outings.