Product Description

How far would you go to keep a secret? It has been ten years since 21-year-old Mack went missing. A Columbia University senior, he walked out of his room and has not been seen since. Every year he calls his mother on her birthday, on his birthday, and on Mother's Day. He assures her he is fine, refuses to answer her frenzied questions, then hangs up. Even the death of his father on 9/11 does not bring him home. Mack's sister, Caroline, has now endured two family tragedies. Determined to solve the mystery surrounding her brother's disappearance, she sets out to discover the truth. But with it comes a secret that someone will do anything to protect, leading her to a deadly confrontation with an unexpected enemy...

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #8276 in Books
• Published on: 2009-01-05
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 304 pages

About the Author
Mary Higgins Clark is the author of twenty-two worldwide bestselling works of fiction and a memoir. She lives in Saddle River, New Jersey, with her husband.

Customer Reviews

Superbly Plotted, Deftly Characterized Missing-Person Mystery
Don't miss this book!

Mary Higgins Clark fans will be delighted with this nicely told mystery, one of her very best. Families provide lots of drama for most people, and Ms. Clark wisely chooses to add family complications to increase the flavor of this excellent story.

What would you think of your only brother disappeared just before finishing college . . . except to make a brief phone call for Mom on Mother's Day? It's pretty frustrating, suggesting that he doesn't care about you at all. Sis is Carolyn MacKenzie, a bright lawyer whose clerkship has just ended sooner than she expected.

Carolyn decides to push brother Mack to permanently surface. He quickly sends a message to back off . . . but Carolyn is not going to do that. Badly dislocated lives are soon fractured in painful ways.

Other currents are moving swiftly in dark places, and soon there are other mysteries to solve. In the process, you'll meet a lot of vulnerable people with secrets to keep. You'll also meet some pretty questionable types. But who did what?

It's a great mystery premise to think about someone who is missing but stays in touch on Mother's Day. I had a hard time imagining what was behind such behavior.

I also liked the way Ms. Clark developed her characters. Lots of them are interesting, and you'll care about what happens to them.

But I must save my special praise for the mystery: It's hard to solve due to excellent misdirection and lots of subtle clues with multiple potential meanings.

Brava, Ms. Clark!

Enjoyable as always
This is a typical Mary Higgins Clark book, it follows the same formula that all her books do, but that's not a bad thing, she can always be relied on to provide an intriguing read that really makes you want to turn the next page.
As ever, there are a whole host of possible suspects here, and plenty of red herrings to try and throw you off track. It's a good read but I don't think it's her best novel, I think some of her earlier stuff was better, 'A Stranger is watching', 'Where are the children','The cradle will fall' and 'Loves music loves to dance' are probably my favourites. I don't think there's ever been one of her books that I haven't enjoyed, she has always been one of my favourite authors with her clever plotting and easy to read style.
If you like your thrillers gory then this will seem tame, Mary Higgins Clark's books are always very tasteful with plenty of murders but no blood and guts, so safe for the squeamish which seems to be a rarity thesedays, every crime novel I pick up seems to be more and more brutal and gruesome. At least there's no nasty surprises in here.
Definitely worth a read.

No one does it better!
Mary Higgins Clark has written another blockbuster. Fast-paced, cleverly plotted and unputdownable.

Charles MacKenzie Jr. ("Mack") went missing ten years ago. A Columbia University senior, about to graduate and already accepeted at Duke University Law School, he walked out of his apartment on Manhattan's Upper West Side without a word to his college roommates and has never been seen again. However, he does make a ritual phone call to his mother every year on Mother's Day. Each time, he assures her he is fine, refuses to answer her frantic questions, then hangs up. Even the death of his father, a corporate lawyer, in the tragedy of 9/11 does not bring him home or break the pattern of his calls.

Mack's sister Carolyn 26, realizes that she will never have closure and be able to go further with her life until she finds her brother, and sets out with her own personal investigation.

And so starts this amazing story, packed with questions, theories, suspects and dangers. The end is a BIG - and horrible - surprise. One does, during the approximate last quarter of the book, start to get an uneasy feeling about one of the key persons in particular, but all in all the plot is so extremely clever that it is impossible to make all the pieces of the puzzle fit, in spite of wage suspicions.

If you look for a book to last you a bit longer than a night or two, this is not it. Once you start, it's impossible to put down.

Yet another superb work from the master of suspense. Highly recommended!