I saw this book in a WH Smith in Euston, and bought it immediately, being a huge fan of Mary Higgins Clark. Why, and how is this relevant, you ask? Well, because I normally don’t buy books from WH Smith, let alone the ones in Euston, where the queues are so long that by the time it’s my turn probably three of my trains have come and gone. However, the prospect of reading a new suspense thriller was enough to convince me that the wait in the queue would be for the greater good.
The book focuses around twenty-six year old Carolyn, a lawyer on the brink of beginning her career, who decides to look into the sudden and mysterious disappearance of her older brother ten years earlier, to attain closure. Mack, a senior in college at the time was about to graduate. Yet, he disappeared one fine day, and ever since, only called up his family once a year, on Mother’s Day, to let them know that he was alive and well. It’s the one day of the year their mother looks forward to.
Even the death of their father on 9/11 doesn’t bring him home. This seems strange and unnatural.
Carolyn convinced that her older brother is in some kind of trouble, begins her investigation. She talks to a detective, hoping for help, but is quickly dismissed. However, when young women start disappearing, the detective finds reason to believe that Carolyn’s brother is a key suspect. Clues begin to emerge, Carolyn is convinced of her brother’s innocence, and she sets out on a full-fledged investigation, talking to the house babysitters of her brother’s college apartment, his roommates, and girlfriend, and digging into the events of a decade earlier. Of course, while all this is going on, her mother is blaming her for destroying her brother’s reputation.
As the plot thickens, and both, Carolyn and the detectives set out to find the truth, the results are surprising. The book’s a page-turner (as you’d expect it to be), and I challenge any reader to determine the guilty party and their underlying motivation for the crime.
Thoroughly enjoyable. Vintage Mary Higgins Clark. 7 on 10.