Vanished by Joseph Finder

St. Martin’s Press, 395 pages, $9.99 (c2009)

Joseph Finder is very reliable if you are looking for a thriller with a military/techno vibe to it, but not overly so. If you are looking for a book about enemies the protagonist can see and avoid or defeat, rather than the virus we are all scurrying from these days, “Vanished” will appease you.

Nick Heller is a “high-powered international investigator with a reputation for being able to see around corners.” His latest assignment has him locating the missing air cargo for one of his firm’s high-powered customers. He solves it rather cleverly and just in time to receive a desperate phone call from his nephew, Gabe.

Teenage Gabe has a special bond with his “cool” uncle, although they are not related by blood. Nick’s older brother, Roger, married Lauren, mother of Gabe. They seem to have a perfect life, if a somewhat boring one, in Nick’s view. Roger works in the finance department of a big firm that does what big firms do. Lauren works as the assistant to the firm’s big boss. The firm, Gifford Industries, receives a double whammy when Roger disappears one night after he and Lauren had dinner at a restaurant. Lauren receives a concussion in the attack by their car and is hospitalized. As the only member of the family who can communicate with anyone, Gabe calls his uncle for help.

Why has Roger been kidnapped, killed, what? He is a low-level executive, the family has no big money, there have been no kidnapping calls or bodies found. It’s a mystery.

Nick has contacts all over the place, not the least of which are at his workplace. There are national and international resources for him to access to find his brother. He first locates a simple video from the gas station across the street from the ATM his brother used to get money right after the attack. There is a shadowy figure at the teller machine with him. But why haven’t the kidnappers called or why hasn’t Roger’s body been found?

The more information Nick manages to dig up, the more he thinks there is something nefarious on a bigger and deeper level involving paramilitary groups, missing money from the Middle East, and psychopathic killers.

Nick and Roger are no strangers to complicated plots. After all, their father is in prison for having engineered an embezzlement years ago. Speaking of which, why did Roger visit their father in prison recently? Is Lauren hiding something? Why is Gabe so sullen, more sullen even than a normal teenager?

Nick searches for personal issues as well as global ones to explain Roger’s disappearance/death. Author Finder moves the action along quite well and has several break-into-offices-for-information scenes, which I love. Nick’s helpers are great, their mission worthy, their skills formidable. Dum, dum, dum, dum…dum, dum, dum, dum … do I hear “Mission Impossible” music?

This is the first in the Nick Heller series. The most recent title, “House on Fire,” was recently released.