Synopses & Reviews
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.
Review
“Never Say Goodbye is a moving love story, a searing family drama, a stomach-churning thriller and one hell of a tale well-told. Go ahead and try to put it down.”
—Bryan Gruley, Edgar nominated author of Starvation Lake
Review
"NEVER WAVE GOODBYE opens with one of the strongest dramatic twists I've read in a long time, but Doug Magee is truly just getting started.
Review
"NEVER SAY GOODBYE blasts right out of the chute with a terrifying premise and doesn't ease up until the final pages.
Review
"Giving nothing away, this thriller leaves you hanging on till the very end to learn who kidnapped four children on their way to camp and why. The interweaving of the stories of the children, their parents, and the kidnappers creates a delicious knot of mystery and culpability that isn't fully untangled until the redemptive finale."
—Paul Doiron, author of The Poacher’s Son
Review
“A page turner of the first order. Scary and believable.”
—Robert Dugoni, New York Times bestselling author of Bodily Harm
Review
"Don't get on the bus--unless you're looking for a terrifying read. Magee shifts the suspense into drive in chapter one--and then we're off on a chilling ride to scream land."
—R.L. Stine
Review
"NEVER WAVE GOODBYE opens with one of the strongest dramatic twists I've read in a long time, but Doug Magee is truly just getting started. In this suburban nightmare scenario that brings to mind the best of Harlan Coben and Linwood Barclay, Magee proves himself to be a powerful new voice who separates from the pack by paying as much attention to human relationships as he does plot twists."
—Michael Koryta, author of So Cold the River
Review
"NEVER SAY GOODBYE blasts right out of the chute with a terrifying premise and doesn't ease up until the final pages. It's a wrenching first novel that grips the reader personally and emotionally and makes one ask, 'What would
I do in similar circumstances?'"
—C.J. Box, Edgar-winning author of Nowhere to Run
About the Author
Doug Magee has been a photojournalist, screenplay writer, children’s book author, death penalty activist, film producer and director, war protestor, college football player, amateur musician, and the basis of the Aidan Quinn character in Meryl Streep’s “Music of the Heart.” This is his first novel. He lives in Spanish Harlem with his wife and two teenaged children.