Vanished by Joe Finder - How'd you like it?

I'll be writing my reaction to Vanished by Joe Finder right here in this space after the due date - January 29. Yes I've read it! Our Mystery Book Club chose this latest Finder book because of two good experiences with previous books. I think this is the first book where we are giving an author a 3rd read - at least since I have been participating (a bit more than 5 years).

So there is still time to read the book and share your thoughts. Once you have read it, please click on the teensy-weensy comments button, at the end of this article (post) in the little line beginning: POSTED BY RICHARD GOUTAL .... Its OK to have "spoiler comments" if you want.

So others be warned, read the book before reading the comments!

The Zero Hour Quite Predictable

Imagine - a terrorist will set off a bomb in New York City, disrupting banking communications around the world. Imagine - the hero is single Mom and Boston based FBI agent who is put in charge of a task force to find the terrorist and stop him before the bomb goes off. The thing is, it is easy to imagine mainly because the plot line is so familiar. It just seemed all too predictable. I'm not sure whether the The Zero Hour (Joseph Finder, 1996) failed - or whether I'm starting to fail to appreciate such stories.

Here are some of the things that bothered me. The terrorist is a former member of the South Africa's spy agency. He was so successful that he was given the designation "zero" -- remind you of "007" at all? Anyway, at the start of the book, he cleverly escapes from a South African prison, killing two people with his bare hands. Very cold. Yet somehow the tension is not there. He is just not believable. Telling me that he is known in the trade as the Prince of Darkness doesn't build the character, it makes a joke of the character. Tension evolves in a thriller like this when the reader is brought to a state of sustained belief, even if the plot is incredible. But that does not happen with this character. Baumann, the real name of the terrorist, is master of everything. He seems to be able to be in more than one place at a time as the plot evolves from Washington DC to New York City. He seems to know many details about American culture, specific places in Washington and New York, and yet there seems no basis for his ability to know these things. He is portrayed as a convincing actor, able to take on accents and personae at whim. He can actually cause Sarah Cronin -the Terrorist Task Force leader- to let down her guard and believe that he is a benign architect. No - it's way too much. Either that or Finder cannot make me believe it.

In the midst of great personal stress, Sarah is relieved when a stranger saves her son from nasty hoodlums in NY Central Park. For several chapters, Finder has this architect insinuate himself into the life of Sarah and her son. There was absolutely not the slightest surprise when the reader is told that the nice guy is actually the Prince of Darkness. Come on! So predictable.

Then there is the whole idea that Sarah would receive the kind of career treatment granted to her by the FBI in the book. The FBI seems way too accommodating to her personal requirement to live in Boston, since her divorce decree required her to live near her ex-husband. Then, she is suddenly brought to Washington and made Task Force leader! Just, not believable.

Finally, Finder goes out of his way to introduce and then explain high tech stuff. But it just gets in the way. Do mystery readers really need to get so much information about the well-known fingerprint classification system? Does anyone not know what a local area network (LAN) is? Well Finder takes a few paragraphs to explain the way the computer network is set up in the Task Force office in New York. But it has no bearing on the story, the characters, or really even the setting.

I read it all the way (but I rarely give up on a book). But it was largely a forgettable story. The Zero Hour by Joseph Finder is not at all up to the quality of some of Finder's more recent books, such as Paranoia. Maybe Finder is stronger with these more recent stories because they are largely new ground - there are not so many "corporate thrillers" as international bomb and terrorist stories. But it's really more than that. I was much more completely drawn into the characters in Paranoia. And the ending of Paranoia is anything BUT predictable.

Corporate Retreats - AIG Comes to Mind

When I think about all the ways the corporate elite collect the many perks of their position, it is mind-boggling. Sure, GM finally agreed to cut back on two of their corporate jets after all the bad PR at the first auto bailout hearings. Then we learn that they have five more that they were planning to continue using. Then their is the myth of the $1 annual salary - meaningless given 5 to 30 million in stock benefits.

I remember the first story out after the big AIG bailout -- that AIG would continue with plans for a lavish executive level retreat in California including massage and spa treatment and a lot more. Again, after the publicity, they changed the location to something less plush. I wonder.

So I am looking forward to reading Power Play by Joe Finder this month. I understand the gist of the plot is that high level executives from Hammond Aeronautics go to an off-site retreat in a secluded house in the woods. Cut off from normal business communication links, they suddenly find themselves under siege from unknown terrorists.

Truly a thriller for a day in which corporate ethics - if they ever existed - are blurred by the pressures of competition and internal political positioning. Finder has written several other books that focus on this theme, including Paranoia.

Not only am I looking forward to reading the book for our Mystery Book Club, but I am looking forward to discussing the book with the author, Joe Finder, live at our Mystery Book Club meeting on January 30!! Awesome!!

Manchester Public Library, 15 Union Street, Manchester-by-the-Sea, Massachusetts, USA\
978-526-7711
Friday January 30, 10:30 am (to discuss the book)
11:30 am to meet the author if you did not come for the book discussion

Are high tech companies paranoid?

Oh yeah. My personal experience is that competition is fierce and security is strict. In several companies I visited, your escort goes into the rest room with you. This is not true of all companies in any way, but it is real enough.

So I found Joe Finder's Paranoia quite fascinating. In fact, it was one of my best reading experiences in a year.

Finder captured the corporate vocabulary and conversation really well, accurately reflecting the tone of the engineers and senior managers as well as the lower level employees.

Finder's previous novels made use of his occupational background with the CIA to create stories of international intrigue; this was his first book in a corporate setting (succeeding books are also set in a corporate world). Paranoia is a fascinating concoction of corporate espionage. It is way over the top, especially the ending which caught me totally off-guard. Still Finder makes the unbelievable plot totally plausible because the characters and corporate setting are so realistic. As was discussed in our library book club, he is just as successful as Gary Braver is in Flashback. Braver's thriller also "sucks you in" because the science references and nursing home settings are so totally believable. The plot therefore becomes plausible. Just so, Finder's corporate descriptions and high tech references allow you to move into that world with your credibility radar turned low.

Is real-world corporate espionage even a little bit like the book? See what Finder says.

There is also a theme in this book, along the lines of Who can you trust? Who are your real friends? It was not in your face, but it was there and I liked that. I must say that I really related to the relationship of the main character to his obnoxiously cranky and ill father. Well done, and absolutely part of the plot and theme.

I have not read Power Play, Finder's newest book, but I have read Killer Instinct and Company Man. I liked Paranoia the best. And although Killer Instinct won the Thriller Award, three of us (in our library Mystery Book Club) liked Paranoia better.

Also, Finder has an awesome author website with lots of great information.

Why the titles for the first six selections??

First of all: I am not pushing any author or book. Period. If I ever get around to writing/publishing something (LOL), I might push that.

These first titles happen to be the ones my (non-virtual) library book club chose to read. (Alluded to in my "welcome" post.) I will be sharing comments about the book from the library discussion group each month. Of course, that will be after the due date for each book.

So why did the library book club choose these books for this year (Sep 07 - Aug 08)? Well, last year, the group deliberately selected books by New England authors. No one in our group had pre-read the books we chose; they simply represented a good assortment of local scenes. Some authors had many books to their credit; some new writers had very few. As the year progressed, we read a number of books that our group absolutely did not enjoy. Although we had hilarious fun pillorying these books, even using them as a helpful measurement of what we did not like, we just did not have much fun with the actual reading of some of these books.

So our group thought we might increase our odds by reading award winning books. Even that is no guarantee. We recently read New England author Thomas Cook's book, The Chatham School Affair, which won the 1997 Edgar Award for best novel. Boy did our group differ in reaction to that book! Several of us REALLY like the book (myself included); others seriously did NOT like the book at all. Our group is well aware that movie-goers often disagree with movie critics, and that may be our experience with Award Winning mystery books. Nevertheless, for this year we have left the local authors theme and gone to the Award Winners theme.

The first six books represent a variety of genres and authors. The awards are not all from the same source (organizations giving awards have their biases too!).

Here are the books and the related awards:

The Lincoln Lawyer (Connelly) - 2006 Macavity Best Novel; 2006 Shamus Best Novel, 2006 Edgar Finalist for Best Novel; 2006 Anthony Finalist for Best Novel.

The James Deans (Coleman) - 2006 Anthony for Best Paperback; 2006 Shamus for Best PI Paperback; 2006 Edgar Finalist for Best Paperback; 2006 Macavity Finalist for Best Novel.

California Girl (Parker) - 2005 Edgar Finalist for Best Novel.

The Virgin of Small Plains (Pickard) - 2007 Finalist for FOUR Awards: Edgar Best Mystery Novel, Agatha Best Novel, Macavity Best Novel, Anthony Best Mystery Novel. Not Part of a Series. (Author has written 16 other novels, divided into 3 series. She has won 3 other Agatha Awards.)

Paranoia (Finder) - Actually it was his book Killer Instinct that won the 2007 Thrillerwriter Award for Best Novel.

Devil in A Blue Dress (Moseley) - Actually he won the Shamus Award for Cinnamon Kiss, the most recent in the series with the Easy Rawlins character. However Devil in a Blue Dress was the first in the series (also made into a movie) and quite good. (Yep I have read most of these.)

The Janissary Tree (Goodwin) - 2007 Edgar Award for Best Mystery Novel, Finalist 2007 Macavity Award for Best Novel