Charles Horman was an American, a freelance journalist and documentary filmmaker who had traveled to Chile in the early 1970s to explore a country undergoing significant changes under its Marxist president, Salvatore Allende. In the course of his research he seems to have uncovered information about CIA involvement in a plot to overthrow Allende. The coup took place, with Gen. Augusto Pinochet taking over as dictator and ordering the mass arrest of thousands of dissidents and suspected opponents. Charles Horman was one of these people, dragged from his home as the American embassy refused him help. His wife Joyce, who was with him in Chile, and his family never saw him alive again. Chilean security police murdered him, though they never admitted it. Horman´s father, Ed, a patriotic American businessman, traveled to Santiago, where officials of the American embassy, led by the ambassador himself, offered to help him search for the son he believed had simply disappeared. The same embassy officials knew that Charles Horman was dead, even as they were "helping" his father, and when Ed Horman learned of this duplicity he turned his anger on his own countrymen.

Published in 1978, five years after Pinochet took over Chile, Missing is a harrowing tale, a real-life modern tragedy that reads like a thriller. It is an explosive story, touching upon political matters that are sensitive to this day. Hauser calmly lays out the story, examining the facts as well as mysterious elements such as the arrival in Chile of a friend of Charles Horman and their visit, a day before the coup, to the seaside town of Viña del Mar. What did they know? When did they know it? These are the answers Thomas Hauser searches for amid the breathtaking suspense of Missing.  less