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Summary
Summary
Mary Higgins Clark, America's "Queen of Suspense," delves into the mystery of psychic powers and communication with the dead in her gripping new thriller, "Before I Say Good-Bye."
When Adam Cauliff's new cabin cruiser, Cornelia II, blows up in New York harbor with him and several close business associates aboard, his wife, Nell MacDermott, is not only distraught at the loss but wracked with guilt because she and Adam had just had a serious quarrel and she had told him not to come home.
The quarrel was precipitated by Nell's decision to try to win the congressional seat long held by her grandfather Cornelius MacDermott. Orphaned at age ten, she had been raised by "Mac," as she called him, and was always at his side on Capitol Hill. Politics was in her blood, and Adam had known her ambitions when they married. Suddenly, however, he became opposed to her plan to run for Congress.
Nell, like her great-aunt Gert, possesses psychic gifts, which her grandfather scoffingly dismisses as "flights of fantasy." As a child she had been aware of the deaths of both her parents and grandmother at the exact moment they died. She knew because at that very moment she sensed their presence near her.
Even though Nell has the rare gift of extrasensory perception, she is much too levelheaded to accept most of the claims made by many so-called psychics and is skeptical about Aunt Gert's fascination with mediums. After Adam's death, however, Gert begs Nell to see a medium, Bonnie Wilson, who has contacted her, claiming she is in touch with Adam. Still regretting her last angry words to Adam, Nell agrees, hoping that she will be able to reach him through the medium and part from him in peace.
As the investigation into the boat's explosion proceeds, Nell is shocked by the official confirmation that it was not an accident but the result of foul play. Adam, an architect, had been involved in a major construction project on land he had recently purchased and
Author Notes
Mary Higgins Clark was born in the Bronx, New York on December 24, 1927. After graduating from high school and before she got married, she worked as a secretary, a copy editor, and an airline stewardess. She supplemented the family's income by writing short stories. After her husband died in 1964, leaving her with five children, she worked for many years writing four-minute radio scripts before turning to novels. Her debut novel, Aspire to the Heavens, which is a fictionalized account of the life of George Washington, did not sell well. She decided to focus on writing mystery/suspense novels and in 1975 Where Are the Children? was published. She received a B.A. in philosophy from Fordham University in 1979.
Her other works include While My Pretty One Sleeps, Let Me Call You Sweetheart, Moonlight Becomes You, Pretend You Don't See Her, No Place Like Home, The Lost Years, The Melody Lingers On, As Time Goes By and Kiss the Girls and Make Them Cry. She is the author of the Alvirah and Willy series, which began with Weep No More, My Lady. She is also the co-author, with her daughter Carol Higgins Clark, of several holiday crossover books including Deck the Halls, He Sees You When You're Sleeping, Santa Cruise, The Christmas Thief, and Dashing Through the Snow. She writes the Under Suspicion series with Alafair Burke. In 2001, Kitchen Privileges: A Memoir was published. She received numerous honors including the Grand Prix de Literature of France in 1980), the Horatio Alger Award in 1997, the Gold Medal of Honor from the American-Irish Historical Society, the Spirit of Achievement Award from Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University the first Reader's Digest Author of the Year Award 2002 and the Christopher Life Achievement Award in 2003.
Many of her titles have made the best sellers list. Her recent books include All By Myself, Alone, I've Got My Eyes On You, and You Don't Own Me.
Bestselling suspense novelist, Mary Higgins Clark died on January 31, 2020 at the age of 92.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Romantic suspense has no more reliable champion than Clark, despite the relative weakness of her writing. For 25 years, through 22 novels (counting this one), she has delivered respectable entertainment to her legions of fans, who haven't dwindled in number. This novel, too, gives them what they want--a damsel in distress aided by a dashing knight; and Clark adds a little zest to the formula by weaving psychic phenomena, including messages from the dead, throughout. The damsel is columnist Nell McDermot, granddaughter of legendary Manhattan congressman Cornelius McDermott and about to run for office herself. Nell's plans are put on hold when the ship on which her husband, Adam, an architect, is attending a business meeting is blown to pieces. Evidence surfaces that Adam may have been involved in shady deals; meanwhile, the cops investigate the explosion, with suspicion falling on a petty hood looking for vengeance for one of those deals; a new man--stalwart physician Dan Minor--enters Nell's life, as does a psychic who claims to be channeling Nell's dead husband; and a predatory real-estate developer circles Nell and property she's inherited from Adam. For much of the novel, the danger is more implied than actual, like dark clouds amassing in the sky, and often manifests itself psychically as Nell sees black auras envelop people or feels terribly afraid. The novel's finale, however, which unmasks some unexpected villains, pulls out the stops in melodramatic fashion. Clark's characters aren't deep--after donating old clothes to charity, two of them, "feeling virtuous for having done a good deedhad lunch at a new Thai restaurant on Second and Eighty-first"--but they're breezy fun, and so is this confection of a book. 1.1 million first printing; Literary Guild and Doubleday Book Club Main Selection; simultaneous S&S Audio; 7-city author tour. (Apr.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
Clark's heavy-breathing 22nd asks who planted a bomb on a rising architect's yacht, and whether the killer may be closing in on his widow. One minute the Cornelia II was lying peacefully at anchor off New York Harbor; the next a fireball had reduced the ship to ashes, along with its four passengers: owner Adam Cauliff, who'd planned the harbor outing as a way of bringing together the major participants in the Vandermeer Tower project he'd designed; Winifred Johnson, the loyal assistant who'd followed him from his old architectural firm; Vandermeer contractor Sam Krause; and Jimmy Ryan, probable site manager for the job. Krause, about to be indicted for bid fixing, leaves no one behind to lament his abrupt passing. But Adam and Jimmy are copiously mourned by their widows, old-money newspaper columnist Nell MacDermott, inconsolable because she'd just quarreled with Adam over her decision to seek her grandfather's old congressional seat, and no-money manicurist Lisa Ryan, who can't imagine how she'll raise the three children Jimmy left behind. But some fortuitous discoveries among Adam's and Jimmy's effects--secret compartments, safe-deposit-box keys, and all the rest--swiftly persuade their wives that there was more to the explosion than the leaking fuel line police had originally favored, and a young child who witnessed the blast has been having nightmares that suggests somebody may have survived. Was it Adam, Jimmy, Winifred, or Krause? Or was the whole scheme engineered by Peter Lang, the big-deal developer who'd masterminded the Vandermeer project but missed the boat that took his fellow-players to Davy Jones's locker? Less suspense and more honest-to-goodness mystery than most of Clark's best-selling output (We'll Meet Again, 1999, etc.), though the author telegraphs each twist so conscientiously that few fans will be fooled. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
Clark, in her latest thriller, is back at her page-turning best. Nell MacDermott, a newspaper columnist, has just decided to run for her grandfather's's former seat in Congress. Her husband, Adam, an architect, disapproves, and the two quarrel. Adam leaves angrily to go to a meeting on his boat with a few of his colleagues. Disaster strikes when the boat explodes, apparently killing all four people on board. Nell is devastated, both because of the fight and the fact that the explosion was no accident. Shortly afterwards, she is contacted by her great-aunt's psychic friend, Bonnie, who claims to be in contact with Adam. Meanwhile, Nell is also discovering that her husband's colleagues might not have been as honest as they seemed. Was Adam involved in any of the underhanded goings-on? Who set the bomb on the boat? Who was the target? Clark offers up a wealth of suspects, from an angry criminal whose mother sold Adam the building he and Nell lived in to a ruthless businessman who is desperate to get his hands on the plot of land that Adam owned. As always, the elements of Clark's plot masterfully converge to reveal the killer. A fast-paced, fun ride that leaves the reader guessing until the end. --Kristine Huntley
Library Journal Review
With an intriguing story line embellished by psychic phenomena and extrasensory perception, this novel is another best seller. Nell McDermott is a political columnist and the granddaughter of a wealthy, well-connected, retired Congressman who has raised her since both her parents were killed in an accident. Nell had the psychic gift then to feel the presence of her parents' spirits right after they died, although she was not present at the scene of their deaths. Cornelius McDermott, her grandfather, has spent most of his political career preparing Nell as his protge and heir apparent in the New York political scene. But when Nell marries Adam Cauliff, an architect on the rise, her political ambitions are suspended; all she wants is a happy, workable marriage. Still, her powerful grandfather wants her to run for his Congressional seat. Good characterizations by Jan Maxwell; expect this to circulate.ÄKristin M. Jacobi, Eastern Connecticut State Univ., Willimantic (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.