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sundayterritorian.com.au SUNDAY REVIEW

Books

Deft thrillerfromveteran

Author Mary Higgins Clark has released her latest novel Daddy’s Gone A-Hunting

DADDY’S GONE A-HUNTING

Mary Higgins Clark

Publisher, price

Reviewer: Hillel Italie

THE desk of Mary HigginsClark looks remarkably or-dered for one of the world’smost popular novelists.

But the upkeep can be ex-plained by a cleaning spreeand a pause between projectsas Higgins Clark promotes anew novel and plans her next.

The long-reigning queen ofsuspense works out of the topfloor of a three-storey con-verted ranch house in NewJersey, logging on to a Dellcomputer that is foreign toher in many ways, but fam-iliar enough for HigginsClark to have mastered howto store a day’s material. Sheis 85 and could have retiredlong ago, but worries morewhen she’s not writing.

She’s completed more than40 books, including chil-dren’s stories, Christmasnovels, a historical novel anda memoir, Kitchen Privileges.

She has co-written bookswith daughter Carol HigginsClark and has so many ideasthat she may bring in collab-orators for other projects.

Her latestbook to hitthe shelves,Daddy’sGone A-Hunting, is avintage Hig-gins Clarkthriller

featuring women in distress,tragic pasts and secret iden-tities. It’s about a deadly ex-plosion that destroys a familyfurniture business in Long Is-land City and about one of thefounder’s granddaughters,injured in the blast, suspect-ed of being in on the crime,who lies in a coma.

Explaining how shethought of the story, Clarktalks about an old acquaint-ance who ran an unprofitablerestaurant on Long Islandthat was ruined in a fire. Heopened another restaurant,only to have it burn down.

‘‘So the FBI said to him,‘Jimmy, next time have aflood’,’’ she says.

She is also fascinated bymemory, what happens to itafter a traumatic event, andwhat we’re capable of under-standing while supposedlyunconscious.

She discusses an incident

from a few years ago, whenshe was recovering from sur-gery and was given too muchmedication.

‘‘My blood pressure wasdropping and so was myheart rate. I had that out-of-body experience where I wasfloating above,’’ she says.

‘‘John (her husband, for-mer Merrill Lynch FuturesCEO John J. Conheeney) andthe kids were all standingaround the bed and it was acathedral-like room. Ithought, ‘I have a choice. If Iturn right, I will not comeback. If I go down, I will comeback and I’m not ready yet’.And I came down.’’

Mary Higgins was born inNew York City in 1927, anIrish-American whose im-migrant father owned a pub.

She turned to writing afterher husband died suddenlyin 1964, leaving her a singlemother with a mortgage.

Her life changed with hersecond book, Where Are theChildren?, published in 1975.Anxious to better supportherself and her children, shelooked to a place she advisesother writers to consult, herbookshelf, writing the kindof books she likes to read.