Never Wave Goodbye: A Novel of Suspense [Hardcover]

Doug Magee (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 1, 2010

An innocent rite of passage turns into a nightmare for four couples, exposing their secrets and risking the lives of their children. 

After passing the bittersweet parental milestone of putting her daughter, Sarah on the bus to sleep-away camp for the first time, Lena Trainor plans to spend the next two weeks fixing all the problems in her marriage. But when a second bus arrives to pick up Sarah for camp, no one seems to know anything about the first bus or its driver. 

Sarah and three other children have been kidnapped, and within hours of the crime the parents receive an email demanding $1,000,000. When the specifics of the delivery terms throw suspicion on the parents of two of the abducted children, some of the parents begin to turn on each other, exposing fault lines in already strained marriages and forging new alliances. While the kidnapped children are living their parents' worst nightmare, the police are trying to sort the lies from the truth in conflicting stories and alibis that seem to be constantly changing. 

Deftly weaving the emotional story that pits the parents of the missing campers against the police—and each other—with the fate of the kidnapped children hanging in the balance, Never Wave Goodbye will keep readers holding their breath until the last page.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Magee fails to deliver on the promising setup of his debut, a contemporary thriller. Soon after oncologist Lena Trainor packs her nine-year-old daughter, Sarah, off to summer camp, loading her into a van with the camp logo and signing release forms with official letterhead, a second camp van pulls up at Lena's Pelham, N.Y., home, and she realizes her child has been abducted. The kidnappers make off with three other children in Westchester County through the same ruse. Wracked with guilt and concerned about her husband's suspicious absence, Lena joins with the other victimized families to figure out their best strategy for a happy outcome. Magee shifts among the perspectives of the parents, the missing children, and the kidnappers, but doesn't manage to make any of the characters particularly engaging. A twist involving the fate of one of the kidnappers reduces the suspense, while the revelation of the person behind the sophisticated plot is a letdown. (June)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

Everything seems in order when nine-year-old Sarah Trainor is picked up for her first away-from-home summer camp: a Camp Arno van arrives with an appropriately clad counselor bearing parental consent forms. But when another Camp Arno van stops minutes later at their Westchester home, Lena Trainor discovers that her daughter and three other children have been kidnapped; a $1 million ransom is eventually demanded. It seems a well-executed scheme, with no single perpetrator having all the critical information, until the inevitable mistake is made. First-novelist Magee has an intriguing premise here, with his narrative alternating between the children in the wilderness of the Adirondacks and their desperate parents fending off the media as they unite to take action. His characterizations are sound, if sometimes slightly stereotypical. But this debut is weakened by occasional predictability, starting with the cause of Sarah’s dad’s absence on that fateful morning and extending to Lena’s melodramatic psychic connection to her daughter, and a lackluster conclusion. Still, Magee shows definite promise as a thriller writer. --Michele Leber

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 289 pages
• Publisher: Touchstone; 1st edition (June 1, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1439153981
• ISBN-13: 978-1439153987
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.7 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (25 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #562,638 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Doug Magee is a writer, photographer and filmmaker living in New York's East Harlem. Never Wave Goodbye is his first novel.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Great until the last 50 pages, July 14, 2010

By 

SCOTUS fan "Supreme Court junkie" (Pennsylvania) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Never Wave Goodbye (Kindle Edition)

As the mother of two young children who went off to camp for the first time this summer, I was riveted by this book from page one. I was sure that this could happen to me, and that's the sign of an author who's really connecting with the reader. As the book went on, I loved the different perspectives of parents, kidnappers, and children.

But the end of the book was SUCH a disappointment. I don't want to give it away, but the book resolves through a clumsy device, a plot twist that could NEVER happen. Furthermore, the suspicions of many characters are never resolved - we never find out whether X or Y was involved in some way. Those who do turn out to be involved? It again seems clumsy, unrealistic. So while the events up to and until the kidnappers are revealed and the children's fate is unveiled are fascinating and well-written, even keeping you on the edge of your seat, the finale leaves a lot to be desired.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Stunning debut!, July 6, 2010

By 

Jennifer Lawrence (DC Metro) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Never Wave Goodbye: A Novel of Suspense (Hardcover)

Lena Trainor is full of emotions as she puts her nine-year-old daughter, Sarah, on a bus to camp for the first time. She's nervous and anxious for her daughter, but her mind is also on her relationship with her husband. She's so unfocused that she really doesn't pay much attention to the camp counselor who picks up Sarah. Until a few minutes later when the real bus shows up.

She hurridly begins to call the parents of the other children to be picked up. A total of four children were abducted, including Linda, Sarah's good friend; Franklin, the son of a local minister; and Tommy, the son of a local contractor. Within a few hours the parents all receive an email, demanding a $1,000,000 ransom.

When the FBI is called in, secrets are revealed, causing conflict within and between the families. No one knows who to trust, they simply want their child back. When the 24-hour mark passes, they begin to wonder if they will ever see their children again.

I simply cannot believe this is Magee's first novel. He reveals a story that is both captivating and chilling. Losing one's child is a parents worst nightmare, but the fact that these parents literally (although unwittingly) handed their children over to their abductors compounds it tremendously. As a parent myself, I couldn't help but feel the hurt, guilt, and anguish the parents were feeling. It probably doesn't help that my son's away at camp now, right? Never Wave Goodbye is not only a tale of suspense, but a study in the human condition, in how well one stands up to such a catastrophic event, seen from not only the parents' eyes but the of the children as well.

My only complaints were very minor. First, the vehicle used to abduct the children was described several times as being a camp van, but the cover clearly shows a school bus. I know that oftentimes authors don't have much say in what their cover looks like, so I don't blame the author. The second is the maturity of the children. They are all nine years old, some from pretty affluent families. They seemed be rather naive when it came to technology, such as using a computer, sending email, etc. My oldest son was able to do these things at a fairly early age, well before the age of nine. Again, a very minor complaint, but one I thought I should mention.

All issues aside, I do highly recommend this novel. It's the perfect thriller for a warm summer weekend...just don't read it while your child is away at camp!

6 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fiction never seemed so real, June 7, 2010

By 

John Hagendorf (Danbury, CT) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Never Wave Goodbye: A Novel of Suspense (Hardcover)

What really struck me about this novel is just how real to life it is. Everything from the kidnapping to what the characters were going through was very realistic. Once I started reading the novel I couldn't put it down. The more I read the more I wanted to read. It definitely keeps you in suspense. It also sends a chill down your spine seeing how this could easily happen to our own family members.