This book is a classic “who-dun-it” murder mystery. The reader witnesses the murder along with one of the main characters in the first pages of the book and spends the rest of the book interviewing witnesses and identifying suspects along with the detectives. The character who witnesses the murder happens to be mentally challenged, and so inadvertently draws attention to himself despite his protective mother’s sheltering. The book gives you enough clues to discover the murderer on your own, and in fact, this was one of my complaints with the book. Having read several books with a similar conflict as this one, I knew from the moment the real murderer was introduced that he was the killer. My suspicions made the final reveal a little underwhelming.

It also became quite tiring how stale the characters were. They each had their architype, and never strayed far, if at all, from what I expected them to do. There were many characters in the book, and the author, Mary Higgins Clark, uses the third person omniscient voice to tell her story, so there were times where she jumped between the thoughts and experiences of several characters to tell the story. And it very much felt that way: telling. Character X was tired of _____ … character Y was scared for her son … character z watched the news and saw blah blah information. Because of this jumping around, I found it difficult to connect with any particular character. I found myself predicting what would happen to move the story along, which made reading feel like more of a game for myself rather than the mystery I’m sure the author intended.

Overall, the book was satisfying, but not terribly innovative, and nothing to write home about. The twists were predictable, and would probably be more shocking for someone who doesn’t read as much in this genre. The characters were one-dimensional, and the writing style was simple and perhaps a bit amateur. The plot felt formulaic and stiff. It all wrapped up in a neat bow at the end, but left me wanting something more substantial.

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Created Feb 01, 2019 at 5:38pm • Submit your own review...