Deck the Halls
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4.6 • 5 Ratings
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
Mary Higgins Clark, America’s beloved “Queen of Suspense,” and her daughter, bestselling mystery novelist Carol Higgins Clark, team up to write a spine-tingling and heartwarming story.
Combining Carol Higgles Clark’s ongoing central character, the young and feisty Regan Reilly, and Mary Higgins Clark’s Willy and Alvirah, featured earlier in the bestsellers The Lottery Winner and All Through the Night, the story begins when Regan’s businessman father Luke Reilly goes missing just before Christmas, held hostage for ransom by his partner’s angered and disinherited son. Regan turns for help to her parents’ Central Park South neighbors, Willy and Alvirah, with whom she shares not only a talent for detection, but an unusually accommodating genius of a dentist who brings them together.
Together, as New York City prepares for Christmas, the three of them join forces to find Luke, only to discover that he is not just missing, but kidnapped, along with the driver of the taxi in which he was riding, a Hispanic single mother of two.
The result is a fast-paced novel of suspense perfect for the Christmas season.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
On her own, each Clark has written reliably entertaining mystery/thrillers that occasionally exhibit storytelling magic. The authors' first collaborationDwhich also sees a collaboration by their respective publishers, as well as the teaming of two of their best-known sleuthsDis only middling, however, though it will please their many fans. Three days before Christmas, Luke Reilly, who owns a string of funeral homes, and his young female driver, Rosita Gonzalez, are kidnapped for ransom. Luke is the husband of Nora Regan Reilly, a bestselling mystery writer based somewhat on Mary Higgins Clark; both are parents to Regan Reilly, Carol Higgins Clark's series detective (Twanged, etc.). Regan gets on the case at once, but she doesn't make much headway until she pairs up with Alvirah Meegan, the cleaning woman who turned private eye after winning a $40-million lottery in Mary Higgins Clark's Weep No More My Lady. (Here, Regan and Alvirah make each other's acquaintance at a dentist's office.) Meanwhile, Luke and Rosita remain chained on a small boat offshore from New Jersey as their two bumbling kidnappers plan, execute and bobble a ransom run. The boat starts to sink. Will Luke and Rosita drown? There's probably not a reader alive who thinks they will, and it'll surprise no one when Regan and Alvirah trip over clues as big as Christmas trees to save the day. But if the novel generates little suspense, it does go down like roasted chestnuts, and fans will greatly enjoy the pairing of two favorite detectivesDand two popular writersDin a lightweight but amiably lighthearted Christmas ornament of a book.
