Buried Secrets

April 11, 2011
Bestseller Finder's compulsively readable sequel to Vanished opens fast and never slows down. When 17-year-old Alexa Marcus, the spoiled daughter of Marshall Marcus, a wildly successful money manager, is kidnapped from a Boston club and buried alive in a coffin equipped with an air hose and a video camera (for Internet streaming, of course!), Marshall asks his old intelligence expert friend, Nick Heller, to find her. The search leads into an expanding world of "buried secrets," from Marshall's gold-digging trophy wife, Belinda, and his crumbling investment empire to allegations of government funding for covert operations and the Russian mafia. A number of characters from Vanished, like Dorothy Duval, Heller's "forensic data tech," and Diana Madigan, his FBI agent ex-girlfriend, lend support. Self-effacing, wry, and ridiculously competent, Heller makes a reasonably engaging protagonist, but this thriller's real star is the suspenseful, expertly paced plot.

Starred review from March 15, 2011

Following the acclaimed Vanished, Nick Heller is back in Boston to help an old friend, hedge fund millionaire Marshall Marcus, rescue his rebellious teenage daughter, Alexa, who is being held captive in an underground crypt, linked via satellite to both her kidnapper and her father. But as Nick begins the search for Alexa, he discovers an array of lies involving Marshall, a former female escort posing as Marshall's adoring wife and Alexa's mother, a U.S. senator, a scheming lawyer, and various government agents and Russian spies. Nick's expertise in Russian studies and international espionage together with the digital forensics skills of his former lover Diana help to locate Alexa--the buried brat who's, like, totally cool. VERDICT Highly recommended not only for Finder fans but for mystery lovers fascinated with digital surveillance. Crisp, clipped chapters and numerous cliff-hangers propel the action at a breakneck pace. Finder's outstanding writing and engrossing plot twists embellish a captivating summer read. [Major marketing campaign; see Prepub Alert, 12/20/10.]--Jerry Miller, Cambridge, MA

Copyright 2011 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from May 1, 2011
A total wow of a read, Finders second novel starring Nick Heller (after Vanished, 2009), who does intelligence work for private clients, backed up by staff including a digital forensics expert, gets off to a quick start and keeps the throttle wide open for the whole ride. This is the kind of book you have to look up from, every once in a while, just to collect yourself. A teen girl meets a handsome stranger in a bar. He offers her a lift home, and she, who suffers from claustrophobia, ends up buried alive in a coffin 10 feet underground. Her father, billionaire hedge-fund manager Marshall Marcus, reaches out to Heller, but Heller knows Marcus is withholding something vital, even though his daughters life is at stake. The novel shuttles between the buried-alive girl (whose scenes are excruciating to read); the kidnapper, in flashbacks as well as the present; and Hellers attempts to crack the double mysteries of the daughters whereabouts and of what Marcus is hiding. Great tension results from the knowledge that Marcus feels he has to keep his secret. About as perfectly plotted and suspenseful as possible, this is a tremendous high-wire act.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)