On the Street Where You Live
by Mary Higgins Clark
$26/Simon & Schuster
I was anxious about reading this book. Having reviewed two of the author's novels in the last year-and-a-half, I've become the unofficial Mary Higgins Clark book reviewer, and those last two were nothing to write home about. But I was pleasantly surprised by this latest effort. On the Street Where You Live is filled with intricate story lines, a refreshing lack of repetition (in her twilight years, the author has taken to repeating certain plot points ad nauseam) and at least a half-dozen possible suspects. In other words, Higgins Clark keeps you guessing to the end, just as a mystery novelist should.
Protagonist Emily Graham is a recently divorced attorney who has just taken ownership of her 100-plus-year-old ancestral home in the New Jersey seaside resort of Spring Lake. Her family originally sold the house in 1892, after one of Emily's relatives, Madeline Shapley, disappeared from there as a young girl. Almost immediately, Emily's new life in Spring Lake is disrupted when, during the excavation for her backyard pool, the skeleton of a young woman is found. Not coincidentally, the finger bone of another woman is found with the remains, and on that finger is a woman's ring — a Shapley family heirloom.
The book's pace quickens as Emily becomes obsessed with discovering the link between the two dead women — murdered almost 100 years apart — and the identity of a murderer who may just be Shapley's killer reincarnate. Add to that a stalker problem Emily's been dealing with for the last year, not to mention a suspect list that includes friends, neighbors, even the local Realtor, and it'll be a while till Emily gets around to throwing a house-warming party.
Inspired by her own new home in that same Jersey town, Higgins Clark's latest effort is catchy, complex and filled with surprises. On the Street is the perfect, fun summer read.
—Kelli K
This article appears in Jul 5-11, 2001.