Here's my latest Joe Bob review. As always, this is my final draft and hasn't had any editorial changes, which may be made prior to posting. I have to admit to be getting antsy, as this is my fifth review and the first has yet to appear. I've been told they are being forwarded, so I can only hope that I eventually see something. *sigh*

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The Second Time Around - By Mary Higgins Clark
Published by Simon and Schuster: ISBN 0-7432-0606-1
Reviewed by Steve Chaput

I guess you might call Mary Higgins Clark the American equivalent of Agatha Christie. While she hasn't come up with instantly recognizable characters like Hercule Poirot or Miss Marple, Clark has certainly cranked out a vast number of best-selling mysteries. Some of them later adapted into TV movies and even a couple of films (WHERE ARE THE CHILDREN & A STRANGER IS WATCHING). When I used to work for a public library in Brooklyn, it seemed that you couldn't have enough copies of her latest novels. They would almost immediately disappear the first day they were placed on the shelves.

This time Clark introduces us to Marcia "Carley" DeCarlo, newly hired writer for the Wall Street Weekly, and a syndicated financial columnist. Carley is also the stepsister of Lynn Spencer, whose husband Nicholas has 'mysteriously' disappeared along with several millions of dollars belonging to Gen-stone, the medical research company he founded. While not exactly fond of Lynn, Carley agrees to help her 'clear her name', while at the same time trying to research an article for her employer on Nicholas' disappearance.

At first it seems a clear case of a con game finally falling apart and the con man (in this case Nicholas) trying to fake his death and get away with his ill-gotten funds. Even Carley, who was impressed by Nicholas enough to invest her own savings with him, believes this is the story until things begin to happen. Things, which can be, interpreted quite differently from how both the police and most of Spencer's investors believe they happened.

Nicholas Spencer, whose supposed death in a plane crash set these events in motion, was the son of a doctor and medical researcher who was working on a radical vaccine which might well prove to be a prevention, or possibly a cure, for not only cancer, but for a number of birth defects. Well liked and respected by just about everyone who met him, a volunteer at a hospice, Spencer seemed on the brink of making a major medical breakthrough until for some unknown reason things began to go terribly wrong.

As Carley looks deeper, both into Spencer's disappearance and the events which led up to it, a number of 'accidents' and disappearances occur which could show that Spencer may not be the conman that most have come to believe he was. In fact, Carley herself is in more danger than she knows, not only from those working behind the scenes at Gen-stone, but from a man driven over the edge by the death of his wife, which he blames on Spencer, and those around him. As Lynn's chosen spokes person, Carley certainly falls into that group and soon finds herself on a killer's 'to do' list.

Clark is a skilled writer and it's easy to see how her ability to create believable characters (both likable and not so) has made her books so successful. The story moves rapidly from the small Connecticut town, where Spencer spent his boyhood, to the fashionable apartments of Manhattan and the boardrooms of major corporations. As we learn more about Spencer, Clark also allows us to learn more about Carley and in the end both of these characters prove to be more than they seem. Three stars.
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I'm not really a big Clark fan, but have read and listened on audiobook to several of her previous novels. My mom loved Clark, so I'd like to dedicate this one to her. Enjoy, mom! I miss you.