I was walking through the Library and I couldn’t figure out what to read when I saw the Mary Higgins Clark section. The titles seemed catchy to I picked one that wasn’t a Christmas one and left. I thought I should at least try one of her books. That same trip to the library I also found The Lovely Bones on the bargain shelf for 25 cents. Well I really liked the Lovely Bones and this one was so so. It was interesting but so far fetched it was almost funny.

In the opening paragraph we are introduced to a serial killer who found a centrury old detailed diary of a serial killer from the 1890s and is performing copycat killings one hundred years later. Half way through the novel Mary decides to tell us that the killer from present day is really the same killer reincarnated. Reincarnated killer. It seemed as if she decided half way through the novel to include that angle. I’m not sure if the idea just came to her halfway through or if she was afraid to include it sooner for fear readers would be scared away by the mystyical factor.

What I really couldn’t stand was the way the characters all seemed flat. They all used the same phrases. The one I couldn’t stand was “on the level”. Who say that? The one thing I did like about the book is that she introduces us to the killer in the first chapter without identifying him. We know that he is a resident of the community, that he is male, and that he found a diary of a killer who lived in the same community in the 1890s and that he is repeating the killer’s cycle. Then she introduces our suspects. But of course we know that she is leading us and bating us to believe it’s going to be one of two suspects and then well I won’t give it away. It reads like a formulaic mystery novel or a Law and Order episode if you can stand those, why not give Mary Higgins Clark a try?