Relative kidnapped by thin, mean and vile criminal in book (3,9,3)
I believe the answer is:
the invisible man
'book' is the definition.
(HG Wells novel)
'relative kidnapped by thin mean and vile criminal' is the wordplay.
I cannot really understand how this works, but
'relative' could be 'sib' (sib is a kind of relative) and 'sib' is located in the answer.
an anagram of 'mean' is 'eman' which is present in the answer.
'and' could be 'n' (common abbreviation for 'and') and 'n' is present in the answer.
This may be the basis of clue (or it may be nonsense).
'in' is the link.
(Another definition for the invisible man that I've seen is " Griffin".)