Author Mary Higgins Clark, 'Queen of Suspense,' dead at 92

[Omaha Steve]

Source: AP

By HILLEL ITALIE

NEW YORK (AP) — Mary Higgins Clark, the tireless and long-reigning “Queen of Suspense” whose tales of women beating the odds made her one of the world’s most popular writers, died Friday at age 92.

Her publisher, Simon & Schuster, announced that she died of natural causes in Naples, Florida.

“Nobody ever bonded more completely with her readers than Mary did,” her longtime editor Michael Korda said in statement. “She understood them as if they were members of her own family. She was always absolutely sure of what they wanted to read — and, perhaps more important, what they didn’t want to read — and yet she managed to surprise them with every book.”

Widowed in her late 30s with five children, she became a perennial bestseller over the second half of her life, writing or co-writing “A Stranger Is Watching,” “Daddy’s Little Girl” and more than 50 other favorites. Sales topped 100 million copies and honors came from all over, including a Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters from France or a Grand Master statuette back home from the Mystery Writers of America. Many of her books, like “A Stranger is Watching” and “Lucky Day,” were adapted for movies and television. She also collaborated on several novels with her daughter, Carol Higgins Clark.



FILE - In this June 3, 2004 file photograph, author Mary Higgins Clark poses in her home in Saddle River, N.J. Clark, the tireless and long-reigning "Queen of Suspense" whose tales of women beating the odds made her one of the world's most popular writers, died Friday, Jan. 31, 2020, at age 92. Clark's publisher, Simon & Schuster, announced that Clark died in Naples, Fla, of natural causes. (AP Photo/Mike Derer, File)


Read more: https://apnews.com/74fd23c000ad16c2fc13b893516e336b

[still_one]

1. Really escaped into a lot of her mysteries

[bucolic_frolic]

2. And surely no relation

to Jack Higgins, whose real name was Henry Patterson. Pen or stage names still roll with cadence that fit well on stage or screen, and often evoke white Anglo-Saxon Protestant origins. Wouldn't be so if they weren't all doing it. But Mary Higgins Clark is her real name!

[NJCher]

3. so here's a personal story about Mary Higgins Clark

Many, many years ago when I was in grad school, I had to have a job with time flexibility. I was licensed as a private investigator and was hired by big insurance companies to interview people who were trying to get multi-million dollar life insurance policies. Clark was one of my interviews.

Just for fun, in the interview I pretended not to know who she was. Of course I knew who she was, even though my reading material at the time was more oriented to academic research studies than mystery thrillers. I had such a laugh as we proceeded through the interview over how she reacted when I treated her like just another Jane Blow millionaire.

Suffice to say she was miffed.

[Aristus]

4. I heard a rumor that she stopped writing her own novels years ago.

And that they were written by other authors from an outline she would provide. Any truth to this?

[bucolic_frolic]

5. Don't know about her, but

sometimes you read a novel and it's like it was written by 2 or more people. The sentence structure, length of paragraphs, cadence becomes far different at one point. Seems to me the Wikipedia page on the historian/novelist Kenneth Roberts says he used ghost writers in later works to complete novels.

[sandensea]

6. Well, she was a staunch Republican.

So it's quite possible.