SAY GOODBYE
November 6th 2008 09:20
REVIEW: SAY GOODBYE by LISA GARDNER
Say Goodbye is ‘thriller’ number 10 by Lisa Gardner, an established writer of romance who successfully morphed into a crime fiction author. *This story opens with a not half bad sex scene that is followed by the musings of an unnamed abuse victim (which intersperses the narrative) then moves on to the main players. It begins to read like a collection of impressions that never form a cohesive body; scribblings that have been forced into a single plot, with misshapen results. *Number one player, FBI Special Agent Kimberley Quincy, is the ‘total package’ we are told –‘beautiful, brainy and pedigreed’. The daughter of a retired agent, she has something to prove to her childhood-absent father. Her mother (and possibly her sister) have been murdered - although this is never fully explained - and she is suffering the obligatory personal conflict: Her husband is harassing her to ease up on her workload now that she is pregnant. We first meet Kimberley Quincy working a crime scene. Gardner has done her homework and it shows – with every clunky technical/statistical/explana tory exchange that she has with fellow officers. Kimberley is led into the pursuit of a serial killer who is targetting prostitutes and the reader is made aware that the killer is also a paedophile who has abducted pre-pubescent boys and subjected them to a life of dominance, control and abuse. Or death. *Gradually it transpires that that the paedophilic prostitute-killer and the soliloquising abuse victim are one and the same. What is intended to be a sharply drawn observation of the cyclical nature of sexual abuse is just confusing. There is too much switching between past and present, victim and perpetrator. And the lack of naming, in order to facilitate the surprise factor, makes it even harder to follow. *The killer calls himself Dinchara (spell it backwards!) and the spider motif is relentless. A vaguely interesting snippet of information about spiders heads each chapter but casting this web across the story does nothing to unify its components. Gardner builds towards a climax that has everyone on Dinchara’s trail, including Kimberley’s visiting father (and his girlfriend) to whom she reveals details about the case which are, presumably, confidential. *When she is not displaying her knowledge of investigative procedures, the author is good with the natural flow of talk between people even when what they are saying is inane – and it often is. Most other characters are used as sounding boards for Kimberley’s intelligent, wise or deeply felt speeches or to bolster the impossible leaps she makes towards the workable theories that drive the plot. Gardner conveys something of the horror that the abuse victim must endure but the fetid canals of the perpetrator’s psyche remain unexplored. *The character of Dinchara doesn’t ring true. A paedophile, who cruelly abuses very young boys and is who is also the hunter and torturer of young women? An individual who exerts total control over victims who are free to escape? Particularly unbelievable is his relationship with Ginny, a street-smart and conniving young prostitute who maintains her connection with him rather than help the police. The author offers a weak explanation, using a brief exchange between Kimberley and Sal, her partner on the case, in which they allude to Stockholm syndrome. It is unconvincing but by this stage, having persevered with the book, the reader will have surrendered any reasonable expectation.
| 147 |
| Vote |
subscribe to this blog
