Joseph Finder Buried Secrets

[Giovanni Gelati]

I have been having a hard time trying to figure out how to start this post. I enjoyed the novel on so many different levels and for so many different reasons I think I would become boring rather quickly by listing them all. I am also amped over this novel because I get to talk to Joseph Finder June 14^th@11amEST on my blogtalk radio show The G-ZONE. Questions for the man, yeah I have a few. The marketing campaign has been fun, innovative and different and the novel was highly enjoyable. Here are a few of the reasons I grooved on this so much:

-Nick Heller- great character, makes me proud to be a part of Heller’s Angels. I wear my Heller’s Angels tee shirt under my Hawaiian shirt at times. Maybe next novel they can make them Hawaiian shirts, really gnarly bowling shirts or like a baseball shirt.

-The surrounding cast of characters- I love character driven fiction; Joseph Finder ups the ante with this novel, great cast.

-Plot Twist- He could make a good Philly soft pretzel with all the twists in this novel, kept me guessing, but was sly enough to include us the reader in on things, loved it.

-A little romance for the top dog- It was nice to read of Nick rekindling some flame, if you know what I mean.

-Many mentions of my homeland and birthplace Trenton,N.J.- Props to Joseph Heller for giving a shout out to Trenton and the surrounding area, even if it was not for things associated with positive influences. Not every town can be known for having call girls, drugs, and mobsters. To all my bend nose buddies reading this post in the ‘Burg, enjoy he did you no disrespect.

-Little things I thought where cool like the musical mentions in various parts of the novel.

I need to put an end to this love fest here. The one thing that I really want to point out is that it not just one thing that I enjoyed about this novel, but the sum of the parts. It was like enjoying a symphony of words. Joseph Finder just wove a fabric of fun, action, thrills and chills. For me the only missing from this was Nick Heller giving us one of those Ferris Bueller winks at the end, tongue firmly in cheek, just another day at the office, another life saved, another girl won over, who’s next please.

Here is the synopsis of the novel, I didn’t forget, don’t worry. And just so you have it, I am putting his very interesting biography right after it. Did you know Joseph Finder sang a cappella music in college?

“Joseph Finder introduced Nick Heller, a “private spy” who finds out things powerful people want to keep hidden, to widespread acclaim from the critics and wild enthusiasm from the readers, in the New York Times bestselling novel Vanished. Now, in Buried Secrets, Nick Heller returns, finding himself in the middle of a life-or-death situation that’s both high-profile and intensely personal.

Nick has returned to his old home town of Boston to set up his own shop. There he’s urgently summoned by an old family friend. Hedge fund titan Marshall Marcus desperately needs Nick’s help. His teenaged daughter, Alexa, has just been kidnapped. Her abduction was clearly a sophisticated professional job, done with extraordinary precision. Alexa, whom Nick has known since she was young, is now buried alive, held prisoner in an underground crypt, a camera trained on her, her suffering streaming live over the internet. She’s been left with a limited supply of food and water and, if her father doesn’t meet the demands of her shadowy kidnappers, she’ll die. And as Nick begins to probe, he discovers that all is not quite right with Marshall Marcus’s business. He’s being investigated by the FBI; he has a lot of shady investors, his fund is in danger and now he has a lot of powerful enemies who may have the motivation to go after Marcus’s daughter. But to find out who’s holding Alexa Marcus hostage, Nick has to find out why. Once he does, he uncovers an astonishing conspiracy that reaches far beyond anything he could have imagined. And if he’s going to find Alexa in time, he will have to flush out and confront some of his deadliest opponents ever. “

Biography-

“Joseph Finder’s plan was to become a spy. Or maybe a professor of Russian history. Instead he became a bestselling thriller writer, and winner of the International Thriller Writers Award for Best Novel for KILLER INSTINCT (2006) and winner of the Barry and Gumshoe Awards for Best Thriller for COMPANY MAN (2005).

Born in Chicago, Joe spent his early childhood living around the world, including Afghanistan and the Philippines. In fact, Joe’s first language — even before English — was Farsi, which he spoke as a child in Kabul. Finally, after a stint in Bellingham, WA, his family finally settled outside of Albany, NY.

After taking a high school seminar on the literature and history of Russia, Joe was hooked. He went on to major in Russian studies at Yale, where he also sang with the school's legendary a cappella group, the Whiffenpoofs (and likes to boast that he sang next to Ella Fitzgerald, an honorary Whiffenpoof). Joe graduated summa cum laude from Yale College, where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa, then completed a master’s degree at the Harvard Russian Research Center, and later taught on the Harvard faculty. He was recruited to the Central Intelligence Agency but eventually decided he preferred writing fiction.

His first book, published in 1983 when Joe was only 24, was RED CARPET: THE CONNECTION BETWEEN THE KREMLIN AND AMERICA'S MOST POWERFUL BUSINESSMEN, the first book to reveal that the controversial multi-millionaire Dr. Armand Hammer, the CEO of Occidental Petroleum, had worked for Soviet intelligence in the 1920s and 1930s. (This book is no longer in print.)

But RED CARPET was only part of the story that Joe wanted to tell. So he wrote his first novel – the only way he could legally tell the whole Armand Hammer saga. Published in 1991, THE MOSCOW CLUB described events whose factual truth would only be revealed many years later. THE MOSCOW CLUB was named by Publishers Weekly as one of the ten best spy thrillers of all time and was published in thirty foreign countries.

What followed were three more critically-acclaimed thrillers – EXTRAORDINARY POWERS, THE ZERO HOUR (sold to Twentieth-Century Fox for a record sum) and HIGH CRIMES, which became a 2002 Fox film starring Ashley Judd and Morgan Freeman. Joe was invited on the movie set and even cast for a nonspeaking role as a JAG prosecutor.

Published in 2004, PARANOIA represented a major turning point in Joe’s career, landing on the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Publishers Weekly bestseller lists, among others. It was his first book to use the ruthless drive, corruption and conspiracy of the corporate world as riveting plotline. Called “fun...movie-ready...[with] twists aplenty...” by Entertainment Weekly, PARANOIA has been acquired by Gaumont, one of the world’s largest film production and distribution companies. The movie deal was announced in April 2009, with Barry Levy (“Vantage Point”) set to script the adaptation.

Joe’s next three novels – COMPANY MAN, KILLER INSTINCT and POWER PLAY – were all bestsellers in which things were decidedly not business as usual. He was quickly hailed as “the CEO of suspense.”

Joe’s latest novel VANISHED, published August 2009 by St. Martin's Press and an immediate bestseller, introduced his new continuing character, "private spy" Nick Heller. Trained in the Special Forces, Nick is a high-powered intelligence investigator – exposing secrets that powerful people would rather keep hidden. He's a guy you don't want to mess with. He's also the man you call when you need a problem fixed. The second novel in the series, BURIED SECRETS, will be published June 21, 2011.

In addition to his fiction, Joe does occasional work for Hollywood, is a member of the Association of Former Intelligence Officers and Council on Foreign Relations, and has written on espionage and international affairs for a number of publications.”

Things have changed around here. I am now the published author by Trestle Press of “I Have Chrome Balls, Don’t You?” an “In Between The Collaborations”, “Down Low- Dead” with Vincent Zandri, “The Jersey Shore Has Eyes” with Big Daddy Abel”, “G.S.I Gelati’s Scoop Investigations Psychotic Detectives” with Thomas White, “Who Whacked The Blogger” with Benjamin Sobieck,“Thad and The G-Man’s Most Awesome Adventure” with Thad Brown , “Hotel Beaumont” with B.R. Stateham, and the soon to be released “Give Us Your Living…Now!” with HR Toye. All the stories are available @ Amazon, Barnes & Nobles and Smashwords. I am also the host of the wildly popular The G-ZONE blogtalk radio show. Thanks for stopping by today; We will see you tomorrow. Have a great day.   http://www.gelatisscoop.blogspot.com.