Wednesday, June 08, 2011

Buried Secrets -- Joseph Finder

If you read Vanished, the first book in Joseph Finder's Nick Heller series, you're probably eager to get to this one. Heller is a "private spy," which means he's not quite a private eye and not quite a spy. He's ex-special forces, which means he can call in favors from all kind of places and that he knows people everywhere with lots of secrets.

In this case, the man with the secrets is Marshall Marcus, and old friend of Nick's family who'd given Nick's mother a job when Nick's father was sent to prison for financial shenanigans. Marcus's daughter, Alexa, has been kidnapped, and he wants Nick to get her back. As is often the case with clients, Marcus is never able to bring himself to tell Nick the whole truth, but Nick helps anyway because he likes Alexa.

Nick's first-person narration is intercut with third-person accounts that reveal what's happened to Alexa. She's been buried alive in a coffin while the negotiations go on. The man who has her is a very bad man, indeed.

Short chapters, plenty of twists, lots of tech stuff, a bit of romance, humor here and there, slick plotting: just about everything you look for in a thriller. Check it out.

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