2020 – “The Goodbye Man” by Jeffery Deaver

Most, although not all, of the books I chose for my 60 Books from 60 Years challenge have been literary fiction which doesn’t accurately reflect the majority of the books that I read. The Goodbye Man by Jeffery Deaver is not literary fiction. It’s a suspense thriller and a very good one at that. The author is best known for his crime novels where his main character Lincoln Rhyme is quadriplegic and a forensics expert but he has also written a number of other series and The Goodbye Man features Colter Shaw who grew up as a survivalist and hunts missing people for the reward. This is the second book in the series and I have read The Never Game which is the first.

In this story Colter Shaw is asked to trace a teenaged boy who appears to have disappeared with an older boy. Shaw does find them, although something dreadful happens when he does. During the investigation he discovers a cult like community living in the desert and witnesses a women who he thinks is being coerced. In an effort to find out more about what has happened and maybe to rescue the woman he saw Shaw infiltrates the cult. He is aiming to find out how genuine it is or whether it is dangerous to its members.

Each of the main characters of Deaver’s series has some quirk which makes them particularly good at crime detection (these quirks are possibly implausible but you need to accept them to enjoy the novels). Lincoln Rhyme is excellent at forensic investigation and the main character in his Kathryn Dance novels is expert at reading body language. Colter Shaw grew up in a survivalist family and is extremely fit but he also assesses situations and decides to act based on the percentage likelihood of events – it is never made clear exactly how he knows either what the percentages should be or how accurate his estimates are. This does mean, however, that in the novel Shaw is continually trying to attach probabilities to things which makes his view of the world different from that of the reader.

This is a well written suspense novel which I found more fascinating than usual because of its setting in a cult which I thought was very interesting (although not as interesting as Laurie R King’s very different novel on the same theme which I review here). The book is full of twists and turns and very little turns out as you expect it to and some people are not quite what they seem. This is a page turner and a gripping story. As it is part of a series there is an underlying story about Shaw’s missing brother and his father’s death which is not resolved here but you don’t need to worry too much about that because it is not a large part of the book.

I’ve read most of this author’s stories at one time or another and I find him an entertaining writer who knows how to get you engaged and keep you reading. This is a very enjoyable novel and I shall look forward to reading others in the series.