Joseph Finder

Nick Heller's brother Roger has gone missing and he's promised Roger's stepson that he'll find him. That's quite the setup and for the first half of the book, the mystery just gets deeper and deeper. Who can Nick trust? The second half of the book has the answer: almost nobody. Along the way, the pace never lets up and the danger grows.

While the story is not without flaws, the writing is clean and intense. The plot, characters, and settings gripping. The sleuthing and fighting were well done. This is a book you will dive into and not give up on until you finish it. Except then you get the feeling that it could have been more.

I felt a little cheated on some of the secondary characters. There were quite a few and they were given interesting introductions. But then they were mostly pawns to be brought onto the board when needed and discarded afterward. I especially wasn't quite convinced that Nick could get one of his coworkers to help him with a burglary operation, not just once, but twice. Maybe I missed something.

Thrillers are obviously difficult to write. Joe Finder is doing an admirable job. I liked this a lot more than [b:Power Play|137002|Power Play|Joseph Finder|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1187753306s/137002.jpg|1739442]. But the last third of the book was a let down. There were the character problems cited above. Things seemed to jump around a bit too much. And some resolutions were a bit obvious and easy (but there were also some good surprises). I will have another look when the next Nick Heller adventure gets told.… (més)

This thriller is about as fine as they get. It has a gripping plot, interesting and distinct characters, unexpected twists, and realistic action. The clock is ticking from the very first page and doesn't let up until the satisfying end.

The author makes some interesting stylistic choices here. The story is told from both the first person and third person limited points of view. But the reader is never confused about why or where they are. The setting is, for the most part, confined to a few locations in the immediate vicinity of Boston. This is unusual for a thriller these days. Most tend to range a bit wider afield. But perhaps it was done this way to emphasize the confined world of the buried girl. It works.

The prose is smooth and easy on the inner ear. The dialog is easy to follow (except for a couple of spots where the back and forth goes on slightly too long without attributions or tags). Chapters are short to emphasize the action, sometimes only a single page. Character and place descriptions are a bit old-school, taking several sentences to tell us about something that many writers are now dashing off with a couple of adjectives and a hand-wave.

This is a great summer read. How long until the next Nick Heller book?… (més)