Readers Guide to Gone Before Goodbye

Maggie lost her medical license during a difficult period after her mother’s death. Evan Barlow, a rich and slightly sleazy doctor, offers her a job. Given Maggie’s work situation and the fact that her sister needs money to keep the family house, she feels she can’t refuse.

Maggie flies from DC to New York to meet Barlow. Porkchop, her father-in-law, picks Maggie up at the train station. He takes her to his motorcycle club, Vipers for Bikers, and then to Trace’s old apartment in Washington Heights. 

During their years with WorldCures Alliance, Maggie, Marc, and Trace developed an artificial heart called THUMPR7.

Maggie looks through Trace’s mail and finds a bill for three post office boxes. She texts Trace a photo of the bills and asks if she should pay it.

Maggie finds out her new assignment:

Doing plastic surgery on criminals. For $10 million.

Oleg, her new patient, wants his girlfriend Nadia to have a boob job and butt augmentation. 

Then he invites Maggie to a ball. Because that’s what one does before surgery.

Marc is NOT alive. He’s a griefbot. WHAT?

Marc is, in fact, dead. Maggie’s sister Sharon made the griefbot. After her mother’s death and then Marc’s, Maggie took too many pills and messed up a surgery. That’s why her license was revoked.

Oleg the oligarch (Dad joke incoming: does that make him an oleg-arch?) doesn’t want Maggie to have a phone and Nadia is missing a kidney which isn’t suspicious at all.

At the ball, Maggie meets a guy named Charles Lockwood who knew her husband. He seems to be here for the same reason. Maggie learns that WorldCures, her defunct charity, was funded by Oleg.

Nadia tells Maggie that she sold her kidney to earn money for her family. Maggie is shocked, but she’s doing illegal things for money too so…

Who is telling the truth?

Oleg denies a connection to WorldCures and suggests that Charles is in the CIA. As Maggie does the surgeries, she notices a tattoo on Nadia‘s leg that is identical to one that Marc had: a serpent with a halo.

Oleg disappears and his minion Cinder Block tells Maggie that it’s time for her to go. But Maggie wants to pursue why Nadia has Marc’s tattoo. Nadia says she got the tattoo when she sold her kidney. And that her kidney surgeon was a man named Trace.

Maggie sneaks into the bedroom to talk to MarcBot, who tells her that Oleg’s thugs will to kill her. As she tries to delay getting on the helicopter, MarcBot gives her a number to call. Maggie escapes out the window, steals Oleg’s Ferrari, and drives off in it.

Porkchop and Sharon Team Up

Meanwhile, Sharon gets a notification that Maggie tried to delete the grief thought and knows Maggie is in trouble. Sharon and Porkchop meet. Through some tech wizardry, Sharon can tell that Maggie dialed a Lithuanian phone number. Porkchop and his friend Pinky go to talk to Dr. Barlow, who says Maggie specifically requested for this job ….by Nadia.

Maggie Crashes Out

Summoned at the Lithuanian phone number, Charles shows up after Maggie crashes the Ferrari. She tells him about the surgery. He asked her where Trace is and suggests Trace is looking for Marc. Charles tells her the Kasselton Foundation’s (aka Oleg’s) donations to her charity were money laundering.

Charles is investigating Oleg. Oleg hasn’t been seen publicly for years because he fears being assassinated. Marc knew that Oleg’s donations were money laundering he didn’t care because he just wanted to save lives. Then Marc became Charles’s informant.

Charles tell Maggie there are three theories about Marc’s death: 

• One: Marc got caught up in violence in volatile country and was killed
• Two: Oleg killed Marc after finding out that Mark was informing on him. Trace got away.
• Three: Marc faked his death

Let’s Go to Dubai and Look for Trace

Maggie has agreed to serve as a concierge surgeon for a rich family in Dubai. She’s given a passport under the name Emily Sinclair. She’s really there to find Trace Packer. Dubai was the last place that Marc and Trace were seen before their final mission in Tunisia. Furthermore, Trace went back to Dubai after Marc died.

First, Maggie’s going to find Nadia. She calls Porkchop who seems to know everything about everything. She asks him to look into Charles Lockwood and tells him that Lockwood claims Marc could be alive. Porkchop does not believe this.

Maggie recalls that Ray, a photojournalist, gave her a password to some photos he took shortly before Marc died. Maggie heads to a club called Etoile Adionia to find Nadia. When she does, she confronted Nadia with the discovery she made while looking at Ray’s photos: Nadia is Salima, the guide for Marc and Trace at the Tunisian refugee camp.

Maggie tells Nadia that she knows Nadia requested her for surgery. Nadia admits her tattoo was fake, but she really did sell her kidney. 

Nadia also says that Apollo Longevity worked with WorldCures to do black market organ sales.

Nadia met Trace in Dubai who told her about their last mission and she volunteered to help. She was in love with Trace. Nadia says the last time she saw Trace was in Dubai five months ago. Trace claimed he got a call from Maggie and had to rush to Baltimore to see her, but Maggie says that wasn’t true.

Maggie asks Nadia why Oleg wanted facial surgery. Nadia doesn’t know.

Maggie calls Bonnie and ask for Sleazy Steve’s phone number, as he lives in Dubai. She makes an appointment to see him in the morning with Nadia. Maggie is still in the club, and a man grabs her. It’s Oleg.

Oleg tells her not to believe anything: someone is trying to kill him, she can’t trust anyone, and it’s all a lie! Just then someone stabs him Oleg in the chest. Maggie is knocked down and trampled by the crowd.

Meanwhile, Sharon meets with Porkchop

Sharon explains the griefbot to Porkchop. She says that when Maggie came back from visiting Tunisia, she was spiraling, self-medicating, and lost her medical license. The bot was to help her cope.

After Maggie manages to escape the club, she calls the police to report the stabbing. Bob says she now put herself on the police radar, which means she can’t do the surgeries as planned.  

Maggie then calls Charles, who suggests that Ivan turned on Oleg. But Maggie thinks that makes no sense. 

At Apollo Longevity, Sleazy Steve examines Nadia. Nadia confides in Maggie that Ivan and Cinder Block have left the county. While Nadia is getting dressed, Maggie distracts Steve so Nadia can try to log into the Apollo computer using Trace’s credentials.

Meanwhile, Maggie asks Steve if she can see the old WorldCures offices. There she thinks about the last surgery, the one she messed up: A refugee with a failing heart was brought to them. Marc and Trace wanted to try their artificial heart, the THUMPR7, inside a donated heart. The procedure wasn’t FDA approved, but they weren’t in the US. Her patient only survived a few weeks. Then her mom was dying, so Maggie fled.

Nadia gets caught by Apollo security. Steve panics: he was accused of helping Trace before. He tells Maggie that about five months ago, Malik (head of Apollo security) asked a lot of questions about Maggie and Trace. Which was the same time Nadia says Trace flew to DC.

Maggie remembers the safe deposit boxes. Trace must have taken something from the office, brought it to the US and left them in the boxes.

Nadia tells Maggie that Oleg’s body was just found.

Nadia, Steve, and Maggie overpower a group of security guards. Then Maggie and Nadia pretend to take Steve hostage. The two women escape through the parking garage.

Nadia tells Maggie to fly to London as Emily Sinclair. It’s not safe for her here. Maggie calls Porkchop, who says he will get her protection.

On the plane, Maggie asks Sharon to research Oleg. Sharon says all info on Oleg was scrubbed, but sends her all the old photos of Oleg she can find. Maggie is shocked.

Let’s Go to Bordeaux!

Porkchop meets Maggie at the airport. How did he get there so fast? He just happened to be flying to Dubai with a stop in London. Maggie tells him they need to go to France. THAT’S where all the secret medical researchers are.

She tells Porkchop about Trace stealing the THUMPR7 and taking it to the US. But she thinks he actually flew to Bordeaux, where Oleg’s secret fountain of youth was. Trace had lots of wine from a specific vineyard in France.

Maggie talks to Griefbot Marc. He recalls their trip to Bordeaux and says that Trace picked the spot. Maggie asks Marc if Trace killed him, which glitches the bot. Then she gives him a hypothetical and he says it’s likely that  Hypothetical Marc is dead and that Hypothetical Trace was involved. 

Maggie and Porkchop go to check out the secret medical facility. They see Ivan walking around the property and he agrees to talk to Maggie. It’s a secret lab/slash/bunker.

Maggie has figured out that the man she operated on was not Oleg, but Aleksander, Oleg’s cousin, who played his body double. Real Oleg asked Maggie to give Fake Oleg (Aleks) surgery so that he’d look even more like Oleg, then killed Aleks to fake his own death.

Oleg may be fabulously wealthy, but he has a failing heart. He was laundering money through medical organizations for access to their heart and organ research. They collected blood and get DNA at refugee camps so they can search for people who have the organ matches they need.

Trace was the one who removed Nadia’s kidney.

Oleg has a heart donor in a coma and needs Maggie to implant the donor heart in him using THUMPR7.

As Maggie preps for surgery, Ivan tells her if Oleg dies, she dies. As she removes Oleg’s heart, there is another surgeon removing the donor heart.

The surgery is successful, but the mystery surgeon is gone. She sees a man in a baseball cap leaving the facility and tries to see who it is.

Maggie is back at the guesthouse when Nadia shows up with a gun, accusing her of killing Trace.

Maggie admits the truth: Trace DID call her before he took the mysterious flight from Dubai to DC. After she visited the refugee camp there were discrepancies in the story witnesses told and the one Trace told. Then Trace stole the THUMPR and ran.

Who killed Trace?

Porkchop shows up and confessed to killing Trace. Trace did fly to DC. He planned to drug Maggie and stage her death as a suicide.

Who killed Marc?

Nadia admits that Trace hired a child army to kill Marc in Tunisia. Trace was worried that Marc was going to talk, which would send Trace to prison for life for illegally harvesting organs. 

Epilogue:

Porkchop has gone off the grid.

Charles calls and says that Oleg is in a coma, but the heart is still working.

Maggie tells Sharon she is ready delete the MarcBot.

As Maggie arrives in New York to see Porkchop, who is waiting for her at Vipers for Bikers. He says he had to let Nadia get away.

Maggie says she knew Porkchop lied about being on the way to Dubai because she checked his passport.

She realized that Porkchop killed Trace after he arrived in the US, probably with the THUMPR7. Porkchop then contacted Ivan through Barlow and offered to give Oleg the heart and get Maggie to do the surgery if they would leave them alone.

Porkchop says Sharon told him that Maggie got their father’s gun out of the basement because Maggie knew Trace killed Marc and wanted to kill him. (This reveal is a bit of a cheat, I think, along with Maggie lying about Trace calling her.)

Porkchop also admits that he didn’t TECHNICALLY kill Trace. He gave him to Ragoravich to use for organ transplants. Including Oleg’s heart, I think.

CREEPY!

Questions You Might Have About Gone Before Goodbye

AI Bots? Black Market Organs? Oligarchs? Dubai? Multiple Mona Lisas? Money Laundering? What Is Even Happening in Gone Before Goodbye?

It’s a LOT and some of it is a bit hand-wavy. If you’re new to Harlan Coben, he often puts things in his book that fascinate to him and we go along for the ride. Like Maggie on Porkchop’s motorcycle.

Back in the early 2000s in Fool Me Once, he explored the evil possibilities in a nanny cam. In The Match, it was DNA testing. Now we have AI grief bots, and futuristic heart transplants.

Please Explain the Trace/Marc/Oleg/Charles Thing. I’m So Confused

• Oleg has money but money can’t buy health. Or can it? Oleg needed a heart, and also needed to fake his own death
• So Oleg had a multi-step plan. First, do his money laundering through high tech health care organizations like WorldCures, to get access to research that hadn’t yet been approved by the FDA, and a means to search out organs to buy (including the donor heart he needs.) Then stage his death, then get his new heart.
• Trace was involved in the illegal organ harvesting. Marc knew about some of the shady stuff that WorldCures, and had started informing to Charles, who is some kind of CIA adjacent person.
• Trace found out and hired a child army to kill Marc in Tunisia
• Porkchop figured this out (he knows all) and after Trace arrived in the US with THUMPR7, Porkchop was ready to get revenge.
• Once Porkchop had both Trace and THUMPR7, he offered both of them to Oleg: Trace’s heart in the scaffold of the THUMPR7 might cure Oleg’s health issues.

How Does Porkchop Literally Know Everything? Is he for real?

Porkchop for President. He can do it all.

The Ending of Gone Before Goodbye! What? Even? Happened?

Am I right that Porkchop gave Trace to Oleg as a human sacrifice. Remember all the talk about the lion and the gazelle? The gazelle is kept alive while the lion feasts? I think that was a metaphor for Oleg and Trace. Very creepy in a 1990s Michael Crichton kind of way.

Who Killed Whom in Gone Before Goodbye?

• Trace hired killers to murder Marc
• Porkchop handed over Trace to Oleg
• Oleg killed Aleks so that everyone would think that Oleg was dead.

My Remaining Question: Who was the Guy in the Baseball Cap???

Maggie sees him at the surgery in France. Who was it? My theory is that it had to be either Trace or Marc. But Marc is dead and I think Trace was the patient. So who was it? Steve?? Please leave theories in comments!