This is the first Clark I've ready, but I've heard her name more than once. She's supposed to be a great mystery writer, so I thought I'd try her out.
What could go wrong?
I could not dislike this more.
Ok, in all fairness, there are elements of this I did like. It kept me guessing, for one thing. One big thing. Gotta like that.
It's just not enough.
Ok, so Mariah's father is killed over a parchment he believes, and is, a letter written by Jesus. We're not talking about Jesus' words written by his disciples. We're talking in his own hand.
Mariah's mother has alzheimers and the police think she killed her husband because he was having an affair. He was, but she definitely didn't kill him.
He'd gone to his friends for authentication of the letter and one of them wanted it for themselves.
And there's always the horrible mistress, she could have done it. And she is horrible.
I had a strange sense of deja vu with this one. Again.
See, there's a character, a lottery winner, friend of the family, and amateur detective. She carries a recorder in her broach to catch people incriminating themselves. She helps Mariah get the baddie. The cops kinda seem superfluous, the be honest.
In the end the bad guy gets caught in a dramatic showdown and the the good guy gets the girl. But as simplistic as that seems, it wasn't my real issue. I hated the writing! I can't believe how much I hated it! Just the narrative and how the characters think to themselves. I know that sounds redundant, but I don't want it mistaken for the character's thought processes. They literally explain things to themselves as if they're explaining it to outsiders.
I knew I was not going to like this book on page six. Six! Mariah is thinking about her father and what's been transpiring recently. It goes like this "I was so furious that he (her father) actually had her (his mistress) in the house when we had his other friends, like Richard, Charles, Albert, and Greg, over for dinner." The pronoun explanations are obviously mine. But seriously?! Who thinks like that?! Listing out the names of friends like that? As if you're explaining them!
Look, it's a necessary set up for the story, but it is unbelievably clumsy and takes the reader right out of the story.
I can't say I would ever recommend this book. And I doubt I'll ever read another Mary Higgins Clark.
The Lost Years, Mary Higgins Clark
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