Analysis
Mary Higgins Clark, whose book titles frequently come from those of songs, builds suspense quickly, with action moving forward rapidly as a sympathetic heroine rescues herself (and others) from a deranged killer. Amid the suspense, Clark often comments on relevant social topics: dishonest fertility specialists (The Cradle Will Fall, 1980), greedy health maintenance organizations (HMOs) profiting at the expense of patients (We’ll Meet Again, 1999), the failures of the federal witness protection program (Pretend You Don’t See Her, 1995), and financial/pharmaceutical conspiracies (The Second Time Around, 2003). In her novels, she typically establishes a chain of responsibility involving blackmail and silence—fear of losing one’s job, intimidation, and pride in knowing secrets—that makes more than one individual culpable.
Clark’s characters are everyday people trapped in frightening situations amid the commonplace: a newlywed who discovers her husband’s terrible secrets, a woman who finds the contractor building her new house is not what he seems, and a grieving stepdaughter who is buried alive. The psychological and philosophical are vital to her creative method. Her heroines may be a photographer and amateur sculptor (Moonlight Becomes You: A Novel, 1996), a Manhattan real estate agent (Pretend You Don’t See Her), the owner of an exclusive boutique (While My Pretty One Sleeps, 1989), a radio psychologist investigating disappearances (You Belong to Me, 1998), or just ordinary homemakers and mothers, but they all undergo a test of strength and prove extraordinary in their ability to endure and overcome adversity. Often they discover links between their private lives and a murderer, always an unquestionably deranged monster, whose evil lies hidden behind a respectable facade (such as the plastic surgeon who puts the beautiful face of a murder victim on patient after patient). A typical Clark heroine is Celia Foster Nolan (No Place Like Home, 2005), who as a child was falsely accused of murdering her parents. Her husband buys her family’s house and presents it to her for her birthday, unaware of its special terrors. She becomes haunted by the past, especially when her parents’ real killer stalks her and her son. A less common protagonist is the serial killer in Nighttime Is My Time (2004), a former geek once tormented by his high school classmates who seeks revenge by targeting members of the popular crowd at his twentieth reunion.
Clark is a master at conveying the back story and relevant facts through dialogue, multiple perspectives, stories within stories, and simultaneous episodes, while maintaining suspense and moving the action forward. Sometimes the suspense comes from uncertainty about the villain’s identity or what the known killer will get away with before the heroine realizes the truth; sometimes there is a countdown to disaster; frequently, Clark leads readers’ attention one way while she slowly builds a set of clues to implicate a far less obvious character. Daddy’s Little Girl (2002) and The Second Time Around experiment with a first-person narrator.
Clark writes about the psychological (personality disorders in Loves Music, Loves to Dance; multiple personalities and childhood sexual abuse in All Around the Town, 1992; a stalker’s mind-set in Nighttime Is My Time), medical science (genetic manipulation and in vitro fertilization in I’ll Be Seeing You; nursing homes plagued by sudden death in Moonlight Becomes You; plastic surgery in Let Me Call You Sweetheart, 1995, and We’ll Meet Again), and household crime (burglaries in Stillwatch, 1984). A political thriller set among the Washington, D.C., elite, Stillwatch depicts two strong women, one modeled on Geraldine...
(This entire section contains 1366 words.)
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Ferraro, whileWeep No More, My Lady (1987), with multiple suspects, is a celebrity mystery set at an exclusive spa. Occasionally, Clark’s lifelong interest in the supernatural appears, for example, the ghost of the heroine’s murdered mother in While My Pretty One Sleeps, the haunted house in Remember Me (1994), or the psychic phenomena in Before I Say Goodbye (2000), in every other way a political suspense story. The serial killer who stalks young women in a present-day New Jersey resort town (On the Street Where You Live) believes himself to be the reincarnation of a killer from the past century and plans over a twelve-day period to commit his historical crimes all over again.
Clark’s sources are friends and family, news events, and personal experiences. Her tightly woven plots capture the suspicions that can plague family members facing murder close to home. Her themes include the insidious effects of the past on the present, human frailty (jealousy, greed, arrogance), vulnerability and innocence, the far-ranging effects of violence, abuses of the justice system, the dehumanization of systems supposedly existing for the public weal, the corrupting effect of money and politics, betrayals of trust both personal and professional, and questions of identity.
Where Are the Children?
Clark’s first suspense novel, Where Are the Children?, set in a misty, stormy Cape Cod and inspired by a New York trial of a woman accused of murdering her children, sets the pattern for her future novels in that it features a vulnerable young woman who, in a time of crisis, proves to be a resourceful survivor. Nancy Harmon, although innocent, is freed from certain conviction for gruesomely murdering her two children by a legal technicality. Relocated and remarried but still traumatized seven years later, she is forced to revisit the nightmare when the real killer tries to repeat his crime, abducting and abusing Nancy’s two children from her second marriage. Nancy, confused and terrified, must find the truth: A manipulative murderer with a multiple-personality disorder happily drugged his wife, killed his own children, and plans to murder Nancy’s children. Despite the complicated back story, the novel spans only one day.
A Stranger Is Watching
In A Stranger Is Watching, Clark questions a 1976 Supreme Court ruling permitting the death penalty. She sets her story over a three-day period leading to the eve of the execution of Ronald Thompson, who has been erroneously convicted of murdering Nina Peterson, and sends her heroine journalist Sharon Martin into harm’s way in his defense. Sharon has fallen in love with Nina’s husband, Steve, who is suffering because of his wife’s death and trying to comfort his six-year-old son Neil, who witnessed his mother’s murder. The real killer, a psychopath, takes Sharon and Neil hostage and hides them under Grand Central Station, which he intends to blow up. In a countdown to the execution and explosion, Clark intensifies the terror by shifting the point of view among Sharon, Neil, Steve, the killer, and the third-person narrator.
The Cradle Will Fall
The Cradle Will Fall, a medical thriller inspired by the first test-tube baby, occurs over a week and features the recently widowed Katie DeMaio, an ambitious young prosecutor pathologically fearful of hospitals. When Kate is admitted to Westlake Hospital after a minor driving accident, she sees out her hospital window, amid snow and sleet, a familiar figure hiding a woman’s body in his car. When she discovers the next day that the woman’s death has been declared a suicide, Kate does not believe it, knowing that the dead woman had desperately wanted a child and was six months pregnant. She begins an investigation into the illegal activities of fertility specialists, including insertion of embryos into the wombs of sterile women. The most terrifying event in the novel is when the heroine must undergo surgery in the very hospital where the doctors she is investigating practice.
A Cry in the Night
A Cry in the Night (1982) is a gothic tale set on a remote Minnesota farm and inspired by Daphne Du Maurier’s Rebecca (1938), Robert Bloch’s Psycho (1959), and Clark’s second marriage. This story depends on the gullibility of Jenny MacParland, a divorced mother of two girls, making ends meet in a fashionable Manhattan art gallery. A Minnesota painter, whose portrait of a beautiful woman seems hauntingly familiar, sweeps Jenny off her feet. Her innocent assumption of this Prince Charming’s goodness and her desire to please prove dangerous to her personal safety. She finds herself trapped in a horrifying world: An exquisite mansion becomes a prison, her life and those of her children are threatened, and the secrets of her husband’s first wife reveal his own dark reality.
