Clark, Mary Higgins

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Mary Higgins Clark

Personal

Born December 24, 1929 (some sources say 1931), in New York, NY; daughter of Luke Joseph (a restaurant owner) and Nora C. (a buyer; maiden name, Durkin) Higgins; married Warren F. Clark (an airline executive), December 26, 1949 (died, September 26, 1964); married Raymond Charles Ploetz (an attorney), August 8, 1978 (marriage annulled); married John J. Conheeney (a retired Merrill Lynch Futures CEO), November 30, 1996; children: Marilyn, Warren, David, Carol, Patricia. Education: Attended Villa Maria Academy, Ward Secretarial School, and New York University; Fordham University, B.A. (summa cum laude), 1979. Politics: Republican. Religion: Roman Catholic. Hobbies and other interests: Traveling, skiing, tennis, playing piano.

Addresses

Home—Saddle River, NJ; and 210 Central Park South, New York, NY 10019. Agent—Eugene H. Winick, McIntosh & Otis, Inc., 475 Fifth Ave., New York, NY 10017.

Career

Writer. Remington Rand, New York, NY, advertising assistant, 1946; Pan American Airlines, flight attendant, 1949-50; Robert G. Jennings, radio script-writer and producer, 1965-70; Aerial Communications, New York, NY, vice president, partner, creative director, and producer of radio programming, 1970-80; David J. Clark Enterprises, New York, NY, chair of the board and creative director, 1980—. Chair, International Crime Writers Congress, 1988.

Member

Mystery Writers of America (president, 1987; member of board of directors), Authors Guild, Authors League of America, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, American Society of Journalists and Authors, American Irish Historical Society (member of executive council).

Awards, Honors

New Jersey Author Award, 1969, for Aspire to the Heavens, 1977, for Where Are the Children?, and 1978, for A Stranger Is Watching; Grand Prix de Litterature Policiere (France), 1980; Horatio Alger Award, 1997; Women of Achievement Award, Federation of Women's Clubs in New Jersey; Irish Woman of the Year Award, Irish-American Heritage and Cultural Week Committee of the Board of Education of the City of New York; Gold Medal of Honor Award, American-Irish Historical Society; Spirit of Achievement Award, Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University; Gold Medal in Education, National Arts Club; Dame of the Order of St. Gregory the Great; Dame of Malta, Dame of the Holy Sepulcher of Jerusalem. Thirteen honorary doctorates, including Villanova University, 1983, Rider College, 1986, Stonehill College and Marymount Manhattan College, 1992, Chestnut Hill, Manhattan College, and St. Peter's College, 1993. With publisher Simon & Schuster, Clark established the Mary Higgins Clark Awards, 2002.

Writings

Aspire to the Heavens: A Biography of George Washington, Meredith Press (New York, NY), 1969, new edition, published as Mount Vernon Love Story, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 2002.

Where Are the Children? (also see below), Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 1975.

A Stranger Is Watching (also see below), Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 1978.

The Cradle Will Fall (also see below), Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 1980.

A Cry in the Night, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 1982.

Stillwatch, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 1984.

(With Thomas Chastain and others) Murder in Manhattan, Morrow (New York, NY), 1986.

Weep No More, My Lady, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 1987.

(Editor) Murder on the Aisle: The 1987 Mystery Writers of America Anthology, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 1987.

While My Pretty One Sleeps (also see below), Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 1989.

The Anastasia Syndrome and Other Stories, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 1989.

Loves Music, Loves to Dance (also see below), Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 1991.

All Around the Town (also see below) Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 1992.

Missing in Manhattan: The Adams Round Table, Long-meadow Press (Stamford, CT), 1992.

Mists from Beyond: Twenty-two Ghost Stories and Tales from the Other Side, New American Library/Dutton (New York, NY), 1993.

I'll Be Seeing You, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 1993.

Remember Me, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 1994.

The Lottery Winner: Alvirah and Willy Stories, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 1994.

Silent Night: A Novel, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 1995.

Mary Higgins Clark: Three Complete Novels (includes A Stranger Is Watching, The Cradle Will Fall, and Where Are the Children?), Wings Books (New York, NY), 1995.

Let Me Call You Sweetheart, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 1995.

Moonlight Becomes You: A Novel, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 1996.

Mary Higgins Clark, Three New York Times Bestsellers (includes While My Pretty One Sleeps, Loves Music, Loves to Dance, and All Around the Town) Wings Books (New York, NY), 1996.

My Gal Sunday, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 1996.

Pretend You Don't See Her, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 1997.

(Editor) The Plot Thickens, Pocket Books (New York, NY), 1997.

All Through the Night, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 1998.

You Belong to Me, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 1998.

We'll Meet Again, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 1999.

(Editor) The Night Awakens: A Mystery Writers of America Anthology, Pocket Books (New York, NY), 2000.

Before I Say Goodbye, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 2000.

(With daughter, Carol Higgins Clark) Deck the Halls, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 2000.

On the Street Where You Live, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 2001.

(With Carol Higgins Clark) He Sees You When You're Sleeping, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 2001.

Kitchen Privileges (memoir), Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 2002.

Daddy's Little Girl, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 2002.

The Second Time Around, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 2003.

Nighttime Is My Time, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 2004.

Work anthologized in The Best "Saturday Evening Post" Stories, 1962. Contributor to I, Witness, Times Books (New York, NY), 1978; and The International Association of Crime Writers Presents Bad Behavior,Harcourt Brace (San Diego, CA), 1995. Also author of syndicated radio dramas. Contributor of stories to periodicals, including Saturday Evening Post, Red-book, McCall's, and Family Circle.

Adaptations

A Stranger Is Watching was filmed by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in 1982; The Cradle Will Fall was shown on CBS as a "Movie of the Week" in 1984; A Cry in the Night was filmed by Rosten productions in 1985; Where Are the Children? was filmed by Columbia in 1986; Stillwatch was broadcast on CBS in 1987; Ellipse, a French production company, produced Weep No More My Lady, A Cry in the Night (starring Clark's daughter Carol), and two stories from The Anastasia Syndrome; Pretend You Don't See Her was adapted for a television move of the same name, for Pax TV, 2002. Many of Clark's titles have been adapted for audiocassette.

Sidelights

The author of over two dozen bestsellers and counting, Mary Higgins Clark creates thrillers with something "special" about them, according to a reviewer for Publishers Weekly. "It's not just the gentleness with which the…writer approaches her often lurid subject matter," continued the same reviewer. "Special above all else is the compassion she extends to her characters." Such compassion encompasses villains and heroes alike, a winning element for this author who started literary life with a biographical novel about George Washington. "You can set your bestseller clock each spring for a new Mary Higgins Clark winner," observed Publishers Weekly contributor Dick Donahue in 2001. The prolific mystery author began her writing career as a newly widowed mother of five, and has instilled her passion for suspense stories in her children, including daughter Carol, also a bestselling novelist. Clark's stories have proven so popular that her publisher, Simon & Schuster, signed her to a then-record-breaking $11.4 million contract in 1989 to produce four novels and a short story collection, and a $35 million contract for five novels and a memoir in 1992. By 2000, Clark had over fifty million books in print and enjoyed bestseller status around the world.

From Adversity to Creativity

Perhaps part of the reason for Clark's ability to identify with the lowliest of characters, even with serial killers, is her difficulty-laden childhood. In many ways Clark is like the characters in her books, overcoming adversity. When she was ten, Clark's father died, leaving a family of three and a widow with mortgage payments to make. Her mother subsequently took in boarders to help pay the way, but still was unable to meet her mortgage payments, and lost her house. The family subsequently moved into an apartment; there her brother, Joe, was diagnosed with osteomyelitis. Overcoming this, he later died from spinal meningitis. Clark graduated from Villa Maria Academy and then went to secretarial school. For three years she worked in a travel agency, and then the lure of travel caught her and she became a stewardess for Pan American Airlines in 1949. "My run was Europe, Africa and Asia," she told Claire E. White in an interview for Writers Write. "I was in a revolution in Syria and on the last flight into Czechoslovakia before the Iron Curtain went down. I flew for a year and then got married." She married Warren F. Clark, a neighbor whom she had known since she was sixteen. The couple was married for fifteen years, and then Clark—like her mother before her—suddenly found herself a widow with children to support. Warren had died of a heart attack.

Clark had always intended to become a writer. "When I was fifteen I was picking out clothes that I would wear when I became a successful writer," she told Powells.com interviewer Dave Weich. "I was sure I'd make it." For the first nine years of her marriage, Clark wrote short stories. "The first one was rejected for six years," she confided to Welch. "Then it sold for $100." Confronted with the daunting task of supporting five young children after the early death of her husband, Clark turned to suspense novels. Every morning she got up at five and worked at her book until seven, when it was time to get her children ready for school. Finally she completed her first thriller, Where Are the Children?, which became a bestseller in 1975, earning more than $100,000 in paperback royalties. She followed that with another thriller, A Stranger Is Watching, which earned more than $1 million in paperback rights and was filmed by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in 1982. For Clark, this meant financial security. "[The money] changed my life in the nicest way," she told Bina Bernard in People. "It took all the choking sensation out of paying for the kids' schools."

A Winning Formula

The key to Clark's popularity, according to several critics, is her technique. Jean M. White of the Washington Post maintained that Clark "is a master storyteller who builds her taut suspense in a limited time frame," noting that Where Are the Children? takes place in one day and A Stranger Is Watching in three. Carolyn Banks, moreover, pointed out in the Washington Post that there is a kind of "Mary Higgins Clark formula" that readers both expect and enjoy: "There are no ambiguities in any Clark book. We know whom and what to root for, and we do. Similarly, we boo and hiss or gasp when the author wants us to. Clark is a master manipulator." Although Clark wants to provide her readers with entertainment and romance, she once commented, "I feel a good suspense novel can and should hold a mirror up to society and make a social comment."

Clark's style is to write about "terror lurking beneath the surface of everyday life," observed White. "[She] writes about ordinary people suddenly caught up in frightening situations as they ride a bus or vacuum the living room," such as the characters in Loves Music, Loves to Dance, who encounter a murderer when they agree to participate in an experiment involving newspaper personal ads. Other stories play on readers' fears of unfamiliar or undesirable situations. For example, Clark explored mental illness in Loves Music, Loves to Dance, in which the killer's behavior is caused by a personality disorder, and in All Around the Town, in which the main character is afflicted with multiple personality disorder attributed to severe sexual abuse in her childhood. In I'll Be Seeing You, Clark's characters find themselves victimized by villains more knowledgeable than they in the issues of genetic manipulation and in-vitro fertilization. Many of the events and details of Clark's stories come from the lives of her friends and family, news events, and even her own experiences. Clark told New York Times interviewer Shirley Horner that the burglary the heroine interrupts in Stillwatch was based on break-ins Clark herself had endured. "Everything that a writer experiences goes up in the mental attic," she told Horner.

Diabolical Plots, Intrepid Heroines

In her novels from the 1990s, nice people vanquish the powers of darkness with great flair. In Moonlight Becomes You, Maggie Holloway, a young photographer and amateur sculptor, visits her deceased stepmother's home in Newport, Rhode Island, in order to investigate the woman's mysterious death. Maggie's search leads her to a nursing home plagued by a series of sudden deaths, and she begins to suspect that she, too, is being targeted by the killer, who does not want her to expose his diabolical plot. A reviewer from Booklist acknowledged that "though this is not her finest book, Clark's popularity will surely put Moonlight on the lists."

In her collection of short stories, My Gal Sunday, Clark introduces a new detective team. Henry Parker Britland IV is a former U.S. president enjoying an early retirement, and his wife, Sandra (Sunday), has just been elected to Congress and appointed the darling of the media. Henry and Sunday specialize in solving crimes that occur among their friends in political society. In one story, when Henry's former secretary of state is indicted for the murder of his mistress, Henry and Sunday determine he is willing to take the fall for a crime of passion he did not commit.

In Pretend You Don't See Her, Clark takes on the federal witness protection program. While working as a real estate agent in Manhattan, Lacey Farrell witnesses a client's murder and has been given a new name and a new life by the government. However, merely changing her name does not protect her from the web of danger and deceit that surrounds the crime. As new clues emerge, Lacey realizes that a link exists between her family and the murder. In the meantime, romance enters her life and leads her to embark on a perilous journey to reclaim her old identity. A Booklist reviewer found the story "briskly paced," though with few surprises. Kimberly Marlowe of the New York Times Book Review noted that in the author's fifteenth novel, Clark covers "a lot of ground … life, death threats and the perfect date."

By the late 1990s, some critics had begun to suggest that Clark's writing was growing rather stale. In a review of You Belong to Me, a Publishers Weekly contributor commented that the book gives fans "the page-flipping perils they expect without challenging them or [Clark's] art one whit." But Clark's popularity remained as strong as ever. We'll Meet Again, in which a greedy head of a Connecticut HMO is murdered, shot straight to the top of bestseller lists after just one week in stores. New York Times Book Review crime columnist Marilyn Stasio appreciated "the diabolical plot that Clark prepares so carefully and executes with such relish," and Booklist reviewer Jenny McLarin deemed the novel "first-rate entertainment." Before I Say Goodbye, also an immediate top-seller, was hailed as one of Clark's "page-turning best" by Booklist contributor Kristine Huntley. And On the Street Where You Live, Clark's third novel in a row to capture the number-one slot in its first week, intrigued critics with its premise that a serial killer from a century past might be stalking young women in a present-day New Jersey resort town. "Clark's prose ambles as usual," commented a reviewer for Publishers Weekly, "but it takes readers where they want to go—deep into an old-fashioned tale of a damsel in delicious distress."

Writing has become a family affair for the Clarks. Carol Higgins Clark's first novel, Decked, appeared on the paperback bestseller list at the same time as her mother's I'll Be Seeing You was departing the hardcover list after seventeen weeks. To critics who suggest that Clark may have contributed to the writing of her daughter's books, the elder author's response is, "Not so, we have very different voices," Sarah Booth Conroy noted in the Washington Post. Conroy observed that Mary "writes deadly serious novels about the sort of chilling fears that come to women in the middle of the night," while Carol "spoons in a bit of bawdy, a soupcon of slapstick." Carol did, however, exert some influence on her mother's writing: she is responsible for saving two of Clark's most popular characters, Alvirah, a cleaning woman who wins the lottery, and her husband, Willy. When they first appeared in a short story, Alvirah was poisoned and Clark planned to finish her off, but Carol convinced her mother to allow Alvirah to recover. The two have since become recurring characters and are featured in The Lottery Winner: Alvirah and Willy Stories, published in 1994. Mother and daughter took their literary bond to a further level with Deck the Halls, a mystery novel they cowrote featuring both Alvirah and Carol Higgins Clark's popular sleuth, Regan Reilly. Mother and daughter teamed up again for the 2001 He Sees You When You're Sleeping.

In 2001, Clark published yet another bestselling thriller, On the Street Where You Live, "an adroitly written novel where a tough woman faces down a villain who is bent on murder," according to Booklist's Ted Hipple. Daddy's Little Girl appeared the following year, and was, according to a critic for Kirkus Reviews, a "real departure for Clark" in that there is "less mystery, more raw pain, and a tough-cookie heroine who tells her own story." The protagonist is a former child witness to the death of her older sister. Two decades after the killing, she will do anything in her power to stop the killer from being paroled. Ellie tagged along with her big sister Andrea twenty-three years earlier to a garage on an estate that Andrea and her friends used as their secret clubhouse. Later, when Andrea failed to return home from a friend's house, Ellie kept her promise to her big sister not to tell about their favorite hideout. Such silence may have cost her sister her life, Ellie realizes. The mother subsequently died of alcoholism while the father married again and ignores Ellie. She, in turn, has become an investigative journalist, and when she gets word of the possible parole she does everything in her power to halt it, working out her feelings of guilt and putting herself personally in danger. A contributor for Publishers Weekly praised Daddy's Little Girl, noting that "with its textured plot, well-sketched secondary characters, strong pacing and appealing heroine, this is Clark at her most winning." Kristine Huntley, writing in Booklist, however, was less convinced, calling the book a "solid if unremarkable page-turner."

Another departure for Clark was Kitchen Privileges, published in 2002. This time out, Clark opted for memoir rather than thriller, detailing her Depression-era childhood in the Bronx, "lacking in money but rich with love," according to a critic for Publishers Weekly. The same reviewer concluded that Clark's memoir "shows what can be done when someone pursues her dreams, remains action-oriented and fights to overcome enormous obstacles." According to Booklist's Huntley, "Clark's many fans will find her life just as interesting as her many novels." Paul Evans, however, noted in Book that Clark's Kitchen Privileges "is one of the most yawn-inducing autobiographies in recent memory." For Evans, there was too little information about Clark's "inner life." Evans concluded, "A shame, then, that the one tale this veteran storyteller blows turns out to be her own." Following this memoir, Clark also republished the work Aspire to the Heavens, under a new title, Mount Vernon Love Story. A commercial failure when first published in 1969, the book was, Clark thought, the victim of a bad title. Its publication in 2002 had a first printing of 350,000. "A light read that completists will devour," wrote a critic for Publishers Weekly.

If you enjoy the works of Mary Higgins Clark, you might want to check out the following books:

Agatha Christie, At Bertram's Hotel, 1965. Linda Fairstein, Cold Hit, 1999.

Nevada Barr, Track of the Cat, 1993.

With the 2003 The Second Time Around, Clark returns to the more familiar ground of thrillers in a tale about a mass killer who has been set onto his killing spree because of corporate crime. The death of Nicholas Spencer in a small plane begins the series of events. Spencer was running from arrest when killed; his medical company promised a cure for cancer, but such claims were false and Spencer ran with the money. Subsequently, investors were ruined and possible patients devastated. One of these is Ned Cooper, whose wife died as a result, and now he is determined to kill all those involved in the crime. Covering the killings is a correspondent for a newspaper who is also the sister-in-law of the dead Spencer. Soon Cooper is on the trail of this journalist, as well. A Publishers Weekly critic felt that the book was a "smoothly told tale," while Booklist's Mary Frances Wilkens concluded that Clark "knows how to spin an intriguing tale, and this time she's created a convincing heroine."

Biographical and Critical Sources

BOOKS

Bestsellers '89, Number 4, Gale (Detroit, MI), 1989.

Newsmakers 2000, Gale (Detroit, MI), 2000.

St. James Guide to Young Adult Writers, 2nd edition, St. James Press (Detroit, MI), 1999.

PERIODICALS

Best Sellers, December, 1984.

Book, January-February, 2003, Paul Evans, review of Kitchen Privileges, p. 72.

Booklist, October 15, 1994, p. 371; April 15, 1996; April, 1998, Mary Frances Wilkens, review of You Belong to Me, p. 1277; September 15, 1998, Kathleen Hughes, review of All Through the Night, p. 172; April 15, 1999, Jenny McLarin, review of We'll Meet Again, p. 1468; April 15, 2000, Kristine Huntley, review of Before I Say Goodbye, p. 1500; November 1, 2000, Stephanie Zvirin, review of Deck the Halls, p. 492; April 15, 2001, Kristine Huntley, review of On the Street Where You Live, p. 1508; November 15, 2001, Joyce Saricks, review of We'll Meet Again (audiobook), pp. 591-592; December 15, 2001, Ted Hipple, review of On the Street Where You Live (audiobook), p. 745; April 15, 2002, Kristine Huntley, review of Daddy's Little Girl, p. 1363; November 15, 2002, Kristine Huntley, review of Kitchen Privileges, p. 546; May 1, 2003, Mary Frances Wilkens, review of The Second Time Around, p. 1538.

Chicago Tribune, September 20, 1987; July 31, 1989.

Cosmopolitan, May, 1989.

Daily Variety, January 10, 2002, Laura Fries, review of Pretend You Don't See Her (television movie), p. 32.

English Journal, December, 1979, p. 80.

Good Housekeeping, November, 1996, pp. 23-24.

Kirkus Review, November 1, 2000, review of Deck the Halls, p. 1519; April 1, 2002, review of Daddy's Little Girl, p. 438.

Library Journal, July, 2002, Michael Rogers, review of Mount Vernon Love Story, p. 128.

Newsweek, June 30, 1980.

New Yorker, August 4, 1980; June 27, 1994, p. 91.

New York Times, January 22, 1982; December 6, 1989; May 18, 1997.

New York Times Book Review, May 14, 1978; November 14, 1982; May 2, 1993, p. 22; December 15, 1996; May 5, 1996; April 19, 1998, Marilyn Stasio, review of You Belong to Me, p. 30; June 29, 1997; May 23, 1999, Marilyn Stasio, review of We'll Meet Again; April 16, 2000, Marilyn Stasio, review of Before I Say Goodbye, p. 32.

Observer, May 7, 1978, p. 34.

People, March 6, 1978; May 9, 1994, p. 35; December 16, 1996, pp. 54-56.

Progressive, May, 1978, p. 45.

Publishers Weekly, May 19, 1989; October 14, 1996, pp. 28-29; March 30, 1998, review of You Belong to Me, p. 70; September 14, 1998, review of All Through the Night, p. 52; October 30, 2000, review of Deck the Halls, p. 47; April 2, 2001, review of On the Street Where You Live, p. 41; April 30, 2001, "Clark's Spark Marks," p. 20; April 15, 2002, review of Daddy's Little Girl, pp. 43-44; April 29, 2002, Daisy Maryles, "There's Something about Mary," p. 20; May 13, 2002, review of Mount Vernon Love Story, p. 51; November 4, 2002, review of Kitchen Privileges, p. 75; November 25, 2002, Daisy Maryles, "A Triple Crossover," p. 19; April 7, 2003, review of The Second Time Around, p. 47.

Tribune Books (Chicago, IL), June 8, 1980.

Wall Street Journal, May 29, 1996, p. A16; December 7, 1998, Tom Nolan, review of All Through the Night, p. A28; December 11, 2000, Tom Nolan, review of Deck the Halls, p. A38.

Washington Post, May 19, 1980; July 17, 1980; October 18, 1982; August 10, 1987.