Dancing in the Dark

June 13, 2005
In Clark's latest KEY News mystery (after Hide Yourself Away
, etc.), correspondent Diane Mayfield heads to the quaint New Jersey beach town of Ocean Grove, not for a much-needed vacation but because even the sunniest of resorts has its newsworthy, hidden darkness. When Leslie Patterson, a young Ocean Grove woman reported missing for three days, is rescued virtually unharmed and claims she was kidnapped, police, friends and family believe her disappearance was a hoax and a cry for attention. Diane's producer Joel Malcolm sees the pseudo-kidnapping as grist for his "Girls Who Cry Wolf" feature and sends Diane to cover it for the network's Dateline
-style Hourglass
program. But the feature story becomes hard news when a second young woman is kidnapped and found dead. Suddenly, victim number one's story becomes credible, and the police, Diane, and her news crew start to take the investigation seriously as multiple Ocean Grove residents have motive and opportunity to have committed the crimes. Clark's latest competent showing will intrigue her eager fans, if not more discerning mystery readers. Agent, Laura Dail.

June 15, 2005
To her chagrin, KEY News correspondent Diane Mayfield is ordered to go to Ocean Grove, NJ, to investigate the abduction of a young woman who may have faked her own disappearance. With her husband in federal prison for misappropriation of corporate funds, Diane is her family's sole breadwinner and so opts to scrap her Grand Canyon vacation, instead taking her children and sister with her on assignment to Ocean Grove. The town is still unsettled owing to the search for Leslie Patterson, whom most now believe was only crying wolf. But when another woman, Carly Neath, goes missing, everything changes. In this latest addition to her KEY News series, Clark (Mary Higgins Clark's former daughter-in-law) demonstrates why she is such a popular author, telling a gripping story chock-full of edge-of-your-seat suspense. She juggles several plot lines with aplomb and uses just a few precise words to create complete portraits of each character. The tension is such that having begun the book, readers will not be able to put it down. For all fiction collections. -Jo Ann Vicarel, Cleveland Heights -University Heights P.L.

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