On the Street Where You Live: A Novel - Hardcover

Clark, Mary Higgins

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0743212193 ISBN 13: 9780743212199

Publisher: Simon & Schuster, 2001

Synopsis

"A popular guest at many of the town's finer homes, he particularly enjoyed participating in the somber discussions about Martha's disappearance that still came up from time to time over the dinner table. I could tell you all about it, every little detail, he said to himself with a self-satisfied smile as he strolled the boardwalk, exchanging pleasantries with good friends he met along the way. But of course I won't. That's our secret -- mine and Martha's."

In the gripping new novel from America's Queen of Suspense, a young woman is haunted by two murders that are closely linked -- despite the one hundred and ten years that separate them.

Following the acrimonious breakup of her marriage and the searing experience of being pursued by an obsessed stalker, criminal defense attorney Emily Graham accepts an offer to leave Albany and work in a major law firm in Manhattan.

Feeling a need for roots, she buys her ancestral home, a restored Victorian house in the historic New Jersey seaside resort town of Spring Lake. Her family had sold the house in 1892, after one of Emily's forebears, Madeline Shapley, then still a young girl, disappeared.

Now, more than a century later, as the house is being renovated and the backyard excavated for a pool, the skeleton of a young woman is found. She is identified as Martha Lawrence, who had disappeared from Spring Lake over four year ago. Within her skeletal hand is the finger bone of another woman with a ring still on it -- a Shapley family heirloom.

In seeking to find the link between her family's past and the recent murder, Emily becomes a threat to a devious and seductive killer, who has chosen her as the next victim.

About this title

Review:

Emily Graham knows what it's like to have enemies. The pretty New York attorney--a millionaire due to a lucky stock market break--has been sued by her greedy ex-husband and stalked by a man who thinks she helped his mother's murderer escape punishment. But when she buys her great-great-grandmother's childhood home in the sleepy resort town of Spring Lake, Emily thinks her new life will be saner, even though five other young women, including Emily's ancestor Madeline Shapley, have disappeared from Spring Lake under creepy circumstances over the past century.

No sooner has Emily moved in than she starts receiving frightening, anonymous messages. Worse, when she breaks ground for a backyard pool, the backhoe brings up the body of Martha Lawrence, who vanished four years ago, and whose dead hand clutches the finger bone of Madeline Shapley, identified by her sapphire ring. Both women disappeared on September 7, 105 years apart. When the cops and Emily realize that a similar parallel exists between two other missing women and that the anniversary of yet another girl's disappearance is fast approaching, they quickly surmise that a sixth murder will be attempted in just a week. But by whom? Is today's serial killer a copycat of the Spring Lake murderer of the 1890s--or a reincarnation? Fueled by fear, anger, and scary little notes from the killer, Emily's actively researching the murders, but even she doesn't realize how many suspects there are: the retired college president, who's being blackmailed, and his perpetually angry wife; the town's bankrupt restaurateur with a weakness for pretty blondes; the middle-aged detective with his finger right on the pulse of the crimes. Even Emily's friend Eric, the software CEO who made her rich, and Nick, her new coworker, seem to show up at suspiciously convenient times.

Mary Higgins Clark's cast of characters may be overly large; in going for quantity she skimps on the characterization, and all of them, including Emily, are as wooden as Al Gore. But characterization isn't what's made this 24-book author a bestseller-list regular. The cleverly complex plot gallops along at a great clip, the little background details are au courant, and the identities of both murderers come as an enjoyable surprise. On the Street Where You Live just may be Clark's best in years. --Barrie Trinkle

About the Author:

Mary Higgins Clark has written twenty novels and three short story collections since 1975. She has served as president of the Mystery Writers of America and lives in Saddle River, New Jersey.

About this edition

• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0743212193
• ISBN 13: 9780743212199
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 480