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World Hotels - I Heard That Song Before: A Novel
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List Price: $7.99
Our Price: $7.99
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: Pocket
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Average Customer Rating:   
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Binding: Mass Market Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780743497305
ISBN: 0743497309
Label: Pocket
Manufacturer: Pocket
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 416
Publication Date: 2008-02-26
Publisher: Pocket
Studio: Pocket
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Editorial Reviews:
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In a riveting psychological thriller, Mary Higgins Clark takes the reader deep into the mysteries of the human mind, where memories may be the most dangerous things of all. At the center of her novel is Kay Lansing, who has grown up in Englewood, New Jersey, daughter of the landscaper to the wealthy and powerful Carrington family. Their mansion -- a historic seventeenth-century manor house transported stone by stone from Wales in 1848 -- has a hidden chapel. One day, accompanying her father to work, six-year-old Kay succumbs to curiosity and sneaks into the chapel. There, she overhears a quarrel between a man and a woman who is demanding money from him. When she says that this will be the last time, his caustic response is: "I heard that song before." That same evening, the Carringtons hold a formal dinner dance after which Peter Carrington, a student at Princeton, drives home Susan Althorp, the eighteen-year-old daughter of neighbors. While her parents hear her come in, she is not in her room the next morning and is never seen or heard from again. Throughout the years, a cloud of suspicion hangs over Peter Carrington. At age forty-two, head of the family business empire, he is still "a person of interest" in the eyes of the police, not only for Susan Althorp's disappearance but also for the subsequent drowning death of his own pregnant wife in their swimming pool. Kay Lansing, now living in New York and working as a librarian in Englewood, goes to see Peter Carrington to ask for permission to hold a cocktail party on his estate to benefit a literacy program, which he later grants. Kay comes to see Peter as maligned and misunderstood, and when he begins to court her after the cocktail party, she falls in love with him. Over the objections of her beloved grandmother Margaret O'Neil, who raised her after her parents' early deaths, she marries him. To her dismay, she soon finds that he is a sleepwalker whose nocturnal wanderings draw him to the spot at the pool where his wife met her end. Susan Althorp's mother, Gladys, has always been convinced that Peter Carrington is responsible for her daughter's disappearance, a belief shared by many in the community. Disregarding her husband's protests about reopening the case, Gladys, now terminally ill, has hired a retired New York City detective to try to find out what happened to her daughter. Gladys wants to know before she dies. Kay, too, has developed gnawing doubts about her husband. She believes that the key to the truth about his guilt or innocence lies in the scene she witnessed as a child in the chapel and knows she must learn the identity of the man and woman who quarreled there that day. Yet, she plunges into this pursuit realizing that "that knowledge may not be enough to save my husband's life, if indeed it deserves to be saved." What Kay does not even remotely suspect is that uncovering what lies behind these memories may cost her her own life. I Heard That Song Before once again dramatically reconfirms Mary Higgins Clark's worldwide reputation as a master storyteller.
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: Everything You'd Expect from MHC :)
Comment: I am so glad that I bought this book, it is among MHC's best works, in my opinion.
The characters are likeable and the story made me second guess myself - I wanted Peter to be innocent, and Kay was convinced that he was but...how could he be? I was torn between guilt and innocence - of course I won't spoil the story for anyone who has yet to read it, though.
As usual for MHC the story was well written without explicit content and foul language, unlike so many other stories in the mystery genre.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Blech!
Comment: Mary Higgins Clark is a very well known name in the mystery/thriller category and one that I have never had occasion to read before. So, when I had the opportunity to pick up this book, I jumped at the chance of finding out how good she is and why she is such a top-selling author. I am very disappointed.
"I Heard That Song Before" starts out with a flashback from Kay Lansing who remembers visiting the Carrington mansion as a six year old, and being intrigued by rumors of an old English chapel, explores the building until she finds it. While there, two other people enter the chapel, so she hides among the pews and overhears a discussion between a man and a woman that involves sums of money. She does not know who the people were, but she does remember that the man was upset after this conversation. In this whole scene is buried a clue that allows for the solution of a whole series of crimes.
The young woman, who was in the chapel, was at a party in the house at the time. She disappeared and has never been seen since. The young scion of the Carrington family - Peter - is suspected of having done something to her. The woman's family is convinced that Peter killed her and are always trying to find some proof of that. Many years later, Peter marries a woman named Grace, and she dies under suspicious circumstances following an argument between the two. Grace was pregnant at the time, and apparently was drinking heavily when Peter came home and yelled at her for threatening the baby. The next morning, Grace is found drowned in the mansion's swimming pool.
Move forward to the time of the story and Kay Lansing is a librarian in the town. She organizes a charitable event in the mansion. She and Peter immediately fall in love and after a whirlwind romance, they are married. This brings everyone involved in the past to the boiling point. Kay's grandmother believes that Peter is responsible for Kay's father's apparent suicide. Grace's mother and brother believe that Peter is responsible for Grace's death, and, of course, there is still that suspicion from before. Add to this cauldron a local district attorney who also believes that Peter Carrington is a multiple murderer and you have a keg of gunpowder just waiting for a spark!
The spark is provided when the family of the first woman hires a private investigator to look into the case. In short order, he uncovers evidence that's been hidden and which paints Peter in a bad light. More and more evidence is uncovered and pretty soon Peter is in jail - charged with a 22 year old murder. Now the case starts taking more and more turns as more and more information keeps coming out. And the whole storyline wobbles out of control.
Kay Carrington is convinced that Peter is not a murderer and so she hires the PI to help her and off to the races we go. The plot is convoluted, twisted, and brings up the subject of sleepwalking as a possible way in which someone could perform murder and not know it. The only problem is that it is so patently not Peter who committed the murder that there is no credibility to the plot. As a reader, I knew what to look for to identify the real murderer, and even without it, it was clearly one of two people other than Peter. So, when the final clue emerges, I merely sighed.
As if this was not bad enough, the author chooses to tell the story in many sections from the point of view of the characters - so, of course, they speak in the first person. However, she does not do so consistently so it is sometimes hard to follow as first Kay, then the PI, then others tell their parts of the story as they see it. But since it is not consistent, we never know if Kay is going to be telling us things in the first person, or will be in the third person. Also, there are many characters and many events that are needed to fill out the backstory, so it is not unusual to meet a character or set of characters in a different venue engaged in something completely unrelated to the story just so one little tidbit of data can be buried in the scene. All of this conspires together to create a very jerky style of storytelling which I found disturbing more than enlightening.
Finally, the dialog was incredibly stilted and some of the situations were unreal.
I do not know if this is representative of the author's style, or if this was an experiment: If the latter, then it failed miserably for me; if the former, then I do not like it. So, if this is normal procedure for this author and you like this style, then please enjoy this book. If you are like me, then you will not find it enjoyable and I suggest you stay away. It is not likely that I will read any more of her books.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Murder, She Wrote?
Comment: This book was suspenseful enough to keep me reading it. I've never read any MHC books before, so I'm not sure if they're written the same. The story was good, but the writing was off. It felt like she switched perspective too often (never quite sure who "I" is, for example.)
Customer Rating:
Summary: okay little mystery
Comment: Okay, I think that by now, all of us Mary Higgens Clark fans got the whole thing down by now: Some lady is pulled into some murder mystery usually involving some political or upperclass thing, nearly gets herself killed, falls in love, while at the same time being around a whole bunch of people which you can cross off the list one by one as they develop reasons for murdering someone. Still, she always gets them original, and doesn't dish off a whole bunch of cloned books. That's why I love her. Again, we're not disappointed. In "Before I Say Goodbye" wannabe congresswoman Nell goes through the loss of her husband when the boat he was on with several associates suddenly explodes. The thing is, Adam (her husband) may have been involved with an architectural scandel, leaving way for anyone to have a motive to kill him. To learn more, Nell seeks the aid of psycics. To my surprise, the book did not totally dive into the psycic thing, only putting it a healthy dose that we could all deal with. The story is very exciting, especially with the two side stories that eventually weave their way into the main plot. The story is not exceptionally good, but is still quite excellent, and Mary definitly gets points for originality, even though it does follow the same rules. But again, that's why I love her books. So if you're a Clark fan, read this!
Customer Rating:
Summary: 3.5 Star Suspenseful Tale
Comment: I must first confess that this is the first novel I have read by famed author Mary Higgins Clark. While I thought this book was very good in the suspense department, the overall quality of writing was significantly lacking in my opinion (and to my surprise). Clark introduces an incredible number of "main characters" along the way in her tale of love, betrayal, and suspense. The number of characters is a bit unwieldy at times, mainly because her character development is quite poor. Dare I say, her character development is virtually nonexistent. While she took time to carefully describe the front steps of a house in one instance, she took far less care introducing new characters -- I found this odd. There is no emotional investment in the two truly primary characters, Kay and Peter Carrington. The romance factor here is also nonexistent. We are simply told in a matter-of-fact manner that the two main characters got married after a whirlwind 5-week romance. I am not saying there needs to be graphic scenes, but a little more development of the romance/courtship would help flesh out these characters. This book is truly about suspense buildup, and it is excellent at this task. As I read this book, I found myself guessing and second guessing the "whodunnit" throughout. I also found the ending to be relatively surprising, and forunately, satisfying of all the questions created in my mind along the way. Although my review thus far has been rather critical, I did find this book to be a real page-turner strictly for the whodunnit nature of it. It is difficult to give a synopsis of this book without giving anything away but here goes ... Kay works in a library and is dedicated to fundraising for literacy. In this pursuit, she decides to approach reclusive millionaire Peter Carrington about using his mansion for an upcoming fundraiser. He agrees to allow the event to be hosted at his home and the two also hit it off romantically. Five weeks later, Kay becomes Mrs. Peter Carrington. Unfortunately, she also becomes involved in a murder investigation that keeps growing. Her husband ultimately becomes a "person of interest" in three murders. Many characters including a business associate, housekeepers, an ambassador's family, Kay's grandmother, a step-mother and step-brother, and a private investigator weave in and out of the story with each short chapter, all lending bits of information, a motive, or a new angle to the three homicides. Each and every chapter is a new turn in the story that will keep you guessing. Throw into the mix that Peter is a sleepwalker and he conceivably could have committed the crimes while sleepwalking, and the story gets quite complex. Kay takes it upon herself to try to prove her husband's innocence to everyone, including herself, as the evidence stacks up against him.
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