SAY GOODBYE

Author: Lisa Gardner ISBN: 9780553804331 7/2008 SUSPENSE Publisher: BANTAM

Come into my parlor . . . For Kimberly Quincy, FBI Special Agent, it all starts with a pregnant hooker. The story Delilah Rose tells Kimberly about her johns is too horrifying to be true—but prostitutes are disappearing, one by one, with no explanation, and no one but Kimberly seems to care. Said the spider to the fly . . . As a member of the Evidence Response Team, dead hookers aren’t exactly Kimberly’s specialty. The young agent is five months pregnant—she has other things to worry about than an alleged lunatic who uses spiders to do his dirty work. But Kimberly’s own mother and sister were victims of a serial killer. And now, without any bodies and with precious few clues, it’s all too clear that a serial killer has found the key to the perfect murder . . . or Kimberly is chasing a crime that never happened. Kimberly’s caught in a web more lethal than any spider’s, and the more she fights for answers, the more tightly she’s trapped. What she doesn’t know is that she’s close—too close—to a psychopath who makes women’s nightmares come alive, and if he has his twisted way, it won’t be long before it’s time for Kimberly to . . .

RRAH's THOUGHTS AND PONDERINGS:

To say SAY GOODBYE is disturbing may be my biggest understatement of the year. Add terrifying to disturbing and you still cannot comprehend what goes on inside the covers of this latest Lisa Gardner work.

This brilliant, convoluted mystery is one of the most relentlessly gruesome novels I have ever read. And that statement covers a lot, since I practically cut my teeth on true crime and suspense novels.

I was at times nauseated, at times shaking as I plunged deeper and deeper into a grim tale starting with missing teenage prostitutes and adding stolen boys along the way. Add spiders—BIG spiders—to the mix and my skin was crawling. Eeeeekkkkk...

The meticulously researched SAY GOODBYE is definitely not for the faint hearted. Many of the subjects covered in this novel are absolutely horrifying, and made more horrendous because children are stolen everyday and pedophiles are practically crawling out of the woodwork.

What makes SAY GOODBYE even more terrifying is these young victims of pedophiles tell of their ordeals and of their feelings of hopelessness in first person narrative. The effect is harrowing.

The suspense is the highlight of SAY GOODBYE. The characters are secondary to this stirring chiller, even Kimberly Quincy, who leads the cast as the young, pregnant, workaholic, second generation FBI agent. Quincy's fitting the pieces to the puzzle of missing prostitutes expands to include darker and darker elements, while her job obsession might strain her marriage to the hunkie, spectacular Mac.

The twists, turns and shocking surprises keep on coming in SAY GOODBYE, giving this novel a relentlessly dark aspect. The snatches of humor in Ms. Gardner's work is usually unexpected, but welcome.

SAY GOODBYE is stunning. Wonderfully written, this novel gives explicit warning to parents about the too real threats from human monsters who put the bogeyman to shame.

Debbie Jett