Gone Before Goodbye, Harlan Coben and Reese Withespoon, authors; Reese Witherspoon, Chris Pine, Saskia Maarleveld, Peter Ganim, Suehyla El-Attar Young, Kiff VandenHeuvel, and James Fouhey, narrators.
Surgeons Maggie and Mark McCabe are working together with their friend and fellow surgeon Trace Packer, traveling around the world to help those in need by providing their medical expertise and surgical skills. They have all had previous military training together. Now they operate a non-profit company and perhaps, unknowingly at first, have also been helping businesses to launder money. Soon, they also realize they have been helping to arrange organ harvesting. This realization caused rifts in their relationship.
Their company, WorldCures Alliance, is engaged in important research to develop an artificial heart. The money coming in funds that project as well, which influences them to stretch the rules and look the other way, without actually acknowledging their wrongdoing. Did they begin to overlook ethical concerns in favor of their personal end-goals?.
When the book began, there was a very exciting and tense scene taking in Libya. Mark was operating on a boy when the area where he was working in was violently attacked. He dismissed everyone and advised them to run to safety, but he refused to leave because his patient would die if he left. Soon, Mark was declared dead. Trace was missing. Maggie was suddenly a widow. Both Maggie and Porkchop, Mark’s father, are despondent. Soon, Maggie is adrift and in debt. She loses her medical license. The company folds. She moves in with her sister Sharon, who is also in debt. Then, one day she gets a call from an old mentor and friend, Dr. Ted Barlow. He is a surgeon for the rich and famous who want discrete services and complete secrecy when they have treatment. In an attempt he claims is to help Maggie, he invites her to join him. She will be paid handsomely. Her debts and her sister’s will be paid off in addition to further financial compensation. He is able to arrange to reinstate her credentials so she can work internationally. Soon, Maggie travels to Russia to perform surgery on an oligarch, Oleg Ragoravich and his mistress, Nadia aka Salema Strauss. Dangerous complications follow, and she soon finds herself in Dubai and then in France. She is trying to find out why she is in so much danger and grows even more determined to find out why her husband was murdered and by whom. She wonders, could he really be alive? She also continues to search for Trace. He might have answers. Her father-in-law, Porkchop, a throwback in times, a motorcyclist, is helping her.
Maggie alternates between someone who seems quite naïve, placing herself thoughtlessly in danger, but then turning into somewhat of a superhero. After surviving violent attempts on her life and sustaining injuries from which she always seems to recover to fight on another day, she again puts herself in even more danger, yet again escaping.
I wondered about the use of nicknames and upon doing some research, I discovered it was a common device used by the author Harlan Coben. I wondered if they were also used to emphasize the attempt to disguise one’s real identity. That is a theme in the cosmetic surgery business for which Maggie was hired. I also thought it might emphasize the more important characters, but one nicknamed Porkchop played a very important part in the novel, so he may have been an outlier.
Although the book created interest and tension, it did not create a feeling of authenticity. Many of the scenes required the suspension of disbelief. I think the novel intersected between romance and chick lit, diminishing the mystery. The premises of the book were very worthy subjects to discuss, however. How far would someone go to save the world from itself? How far would someone go to avenge a loved one’s death? How much danger is one willing to accept to save another’s life? What makes a hero? What makes a villain? In the end, no character was exactly who they pretended to be, and each seemed to have a major flaw. Although many scenes seemed repetitive, as was some of the dialogue, the ending was filled with unexpected surprises.