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Say Goodbye | 
 enlarge | Author: Lisa Gardner
Publisher: Bantam
Category: Book
List Price: $25.00
Buy New: $6.00
You Save: $19.00 (76%)
New (47) Used (35) Collectible (4) from $5.50
Rating:  42 reviews
Sales Rank: 1926
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 368
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.4
Dimensions (in): 9.1 x 6.5 x 1.5
ISBN: 0553804332
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780553804331
ASIN: 0553804332
Publication Date: July 15, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
Lisa Gardner, the New York Times bestselling author of Hide and Gone, draws us into the venomous mind games of her most terrifying killer yet.
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 . . .
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| Customer Reviews: Read 37 more reviews...
 Enough with the spiders already! August 27, 2008
Let me first say that Lisa Gardner is one of my favorite authors, and I have loved all of her other books. I could not wait for this one, and was really disappointed. The only reason it got 2 stars is because the last 80 pages or so are pretty good, and I liked the way the story was tied up. However, having to read about every spider fact known to mankind got old very quickly. I really hated this aspect of the book.
Like others, the child sexual abuse was hard to take, though I do not think that Gardner exploited it. Having recently had a child, it was difficult reading about every mother's nightmare.
I also agree with another reviewer's comments about some of the dialogue, "Look at That" ??! seeming so amateurish, in addition to the sudden desire that came on between Kimberly and Sal out of nowhere.
The book is "ok", but certainly not one that I would recommend.
 Say goodbye ........... August 25, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
This is by far one of the best books I have read. In fact, I couldn't put it down. I always have a book in tow,no matter where I go. This one I put on my "red light" list. My red light list are those books that are so good that when you get to a red light you have to pick it up and read a few lines before the light turns green. Believe me, there are plenty of good books but very few red light books.
From J. Kaye's Book Blog August 22, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
The story begins with a plane crash which appears to be an accident until extra body parts turn up. This investigation leads the main character, FBI Special Agent Kimberly Quincy to a serial killer that might not have been discovered for years if not for the accident.
While Agent Quincy connects the dots, the story flips back and forth from the the killer's point of view to his past to the present investigation. The reader will get the inside scoop on how this killer was created. And warning folks, this psychopath has a major creep-out factor going for him. Also, the killer's voice is where this writer is at her most creative state.
Another place where Gardner exercises her creative skills was with the main character. Quincy is pregnant, but aside from the food cravings, not your typical stereotype first time mom-to-be. All she has ever known is has been put into work and she's not ready for motherhood. She puts herself and her unborn child in danger more than once and I don't know if readers will be cool with that.
When I compare SAY GOODBYE with her previous work such as HIDE or ALONE, this latest book is probably her most extraordinary piece of work. Her characters are deeper, richer than ever before. HIDE will remain my favorite, but this book exposes her incredible talent.
 very difficult as an audiobook August 22, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I listened to this book, and found it utterly confusing. Without visual clues as to flashbacks, all the different "I" backstories with no name attached made it seem like characters were constantly dying and apparently coming back to life. Authors need to think of audiobook listeners and provide cues for us - many do it well.
I learned something about spiders, but the book was too dark to call enjoyable. I stayed with it throughout but never quite sorted out who was who, who was killing who, and which of the boys and men were speaking as part of the backstory.
On the plus side, it kept me awake while filing a year's worth of bills, and provided some useful warnings to parents complacent about the internet activities of their offspring.
 This book is simply not that good August 21, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Say Goodbye (ARC version) is a reasonably well written suspense/thriller about a variety of intelligence agencies and police forces, (including the usual plethora of acronyms that are recognizable or not), coming together to solve the mystery of a large number of missing prostitutes. Ms. Gardner works at keeping the suspense level high and the villain(s) ambiguous. A secondary storyline about child predators and child victims is particularly gruesome and heartrending. The author does a good job of keeping the action moving with interweaving stories, creative crime scenes and sidebar information.
However, this novel is overly ambitious as the author attempts to speak out against a multitude of evils, including rape, child pornography, prostitution, murder, abduction, kidnapping, sodomy and other sexual depravities. She could have chosen one or two of these and still had a good story to tell. All of these crimes are equally horrific in their own way, making the use of all these evils in one storyline is a bit overwhelming. She also has numerous sub-themes that are never fully developed, including pregnancy, foster parenting, the financial problems of the elderly, marital issues surrounding mothers working outside the home, the possibility of ancestors hanging around as ghosts, internet predators, etc.
There is little relief from the horror, with the added perplexity of the italicized voice of the villain(s)/victim(s) threaded throughout the narrative. In attempting to make the reader really work to discover who the villain(s) and victim(s) are, a great deal of ambiguity is written into this part of the story, including an undefined timeline that is used to shroud the mystery further. The problem is that this device distracts the reader from the story, as the reader keeps attempting to determine if it is a flashback or the present time.
Added to the criminal horror, you also get a lot of spiders, bugs, snakes and other creepy crawlies sliming around the perimeter of the story. Although this aspect of the novel rates high on the yuch-o-meter scale and may be TMI, there are some interesting arachnid tidbits quoted as lead-ins to the chapters.
If you are a first-time reader of Lisa Gardner, beware of choosing to read this book first. Say Goodbye includes a number of characters from her prior publications (of which this reader was unaware), such that much of the lead characters' back-stories are contained in other novels. There is no indication of this anywhere in the front pages of the book or back cover blurb, so the reader is stuck out on a limb once you start the book. This novel can certainly be read as a stand-alone, but the reader's knowledge of the lead characters and their motivations is rendered incomplete, making the reading less satisfying.
In conclusion, I generally enjoyed the pace of this novel and read it in one sitting. It was a tense and suspenseful read, even though I gritted my teeth every time my concentration was invaded by the author's use of fragments instead of full sentences, her somewhat oddly written unsynchronized conversations and incorrect verb tense. I did feel it was too ambitious with the multitude of crime elements and themes; it could have been a tighter story and more suspenseful if only one or two crimes were developed. I was annoyed with the undefined timeline in both the general narrative and the italicized storyline. I felt that most of the characters were either undeveloped or that I should have read earlier books to better know the lead characters. Confusion exists at the end with regard to the villain that makes the denouement unsatisfying.
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