Sue de Groot reviews the Harlan Coben and Reese Witherspoon collab ‘Gone Before Goodbye’ - Coben with a Spoon

Gone Before Goodbye

Harlan Coben and Reese Witherspoon, Penguin Random House/Century

Separately, Harlan Coben and Reese Witherspoon need no introduction. One is a writer of thrilling global bestsellers; the other is a world-famous actress and producer whose company, Hello Sunshine, brings woman-centred stories to life on multiple media platforms.

No one thought to mention the two in the same breath until they came together to write the new novel, Gone Before Goodbye. Who knew they’d been friends for years and shared the same sensibilities?

The story of When Harlan Met Reese began 10 years ago. They were introduced at a conference and stayed in touch after exchanging much mutual admiration. In an interview with People magazine, Coben said, “She’s fangirled; I’ve fanboyed. I’m a big fan of hers; she’s read and watched all mine, and I’ve read and watched all hers and been a fan of the work that she’s done for books in general.”

So when Witherspoon decided it was time to shine her love of literature onto the creation of adult fiction — she had already published three children’s books and is the founder of Reese’s Book Club — she called Coben with her idea, and after a three-hour phone call, the die was cast. As Coben later told USA Today: “We both knew at the end there’s no way we’re not going to do this. It was just too much fun.”

Speaking on CBS News, Witherspoon said: “I’ve never had an idea for a novel before. I’m always the actor who shows up and executes someone else’s vision. I thought, maybe it’s time to take the big leap and build the world myself.”

The heroine of Gone Before Goodbye is Maggie McCabe, a brilliant surgeon dedicated to saving lives and restoring human bodies. Much of Maggie’s work has been done in appalling conditions in some of the world’s worst combat zones, until cataclysmic personal and professional tragedies pulled her into a pit of despair.

Maggie is persuaded by unconventional means to provide unconventional medical assistance to a highly unconventional individual of unlimited means. Thus the plot takes us from the arid deprivation of war-torn refugee camps to a snowy fortress so remote and palatial that even Ian Fleming’s James Bond would have done a triple-take at its excesses.

As things get wildly dangerous and progressively weirder, Maggie finds out more than she would like to know about what the rich will do to prolong their lives, what her doctor husband might or might not have done in the name of science, and what she might be capable of doing when faced with a choice between truth and survival.

Witherspoon’s idea for Maggie was born out of experience: her parents were medical professionals who worked on various US military bases, on which Witherspoon grew up and witnessed things most children are shielded from.

Gone Before Goodbye is above all a masterly feat of entertainment, with every twist as electrifying as it is unpredictable, but what makes it even more alive is its strong sense of social justice, embodied in the character of Maggie. This is pure Witherspoon: she is well known not only for selflessly and tirelessly promoting women but for championing other humanitarian causes. In 2014 she took on the leading role in The Good Lie, Philippe Falardeau’s poignant film about children orphaned in the Sudanese conflict, some of whom find strange and shaky refuge in the US.

As to the practicalities of how they wrote as a team, Coben told People that he was “the guy at the keyboard, because you can’t ride two horses with one behind”, but he emphasised that the process was deeply collaborative.

Witherspoon constantly sent him reams of research, articles, ideas, observations and opinions, and they spent an enormous amount of time on calls, texts, emails and in person, riffing off each other to refine a story that “readers would lose sleep over”.

This is the first time Coben has even considered working with someone else on a book, and it is a relief to hear that Witherspoon is not as cool, kind, and smart as she seems.

In his acknowledgements at the end of Gone Before Goodbye, Coben writes that he has been asked this question about her many times — “and the honest answer is no, she’s even cooler, kinder, and smarter than you imagine”.