Where Are You Now? by Mary Higgins ClarkREVIEW: Where Are You Now? By Mary Hig­gins Clark, copy­right April 2008, pub­lished by Simon & Schus­ter. Where Are You Now? is the lat­est book for Ms. Mary Hig­gins Clark and it is avail­able in hard­back and ebook at your favorite retailer.

Ten years ago, Charles Macken­zie, Jr. (Mac) dis­ap­peared from the Manhattan’s Upper West Side Apart­ment he shared with two col­lege room­mates, Nick and Bruce. Mac was about to grad­u­ate from Colum­bia Uni­ver­sity and head off to Duke Uni­ver­sity Law School. No one had a clue as to what hap­pened to him.

The only con­tact Mac has had with his fam­ily is a tele­phone call every Mother’s Day. When he talks to his mother he says very lit­tle and tells them “not to worry about me”. On 9/11, Mac’s father died in the Twin Tow­ers tragedy-leaving Car­olyn, Mac’s lit­tle sis­ter, now 26 years old and her mother to wait each Mother’s Day for Mac’s call. After putting up with this for 10 years (she was 16 when he dis­ap­peared) Car­olyn real­izes that they can­not con­tinue with this rit­ual and decide that she will find her brother and get to the bot­tom of why he has not come home.

When Mac calls and is speak­ing with her mother, Car­olyn picks up the phone and tells Mac that she is going to find him no mat­ter what. The fol­low­ing day after Mass ‚a note is found in the col­lec­tion bas­ket at Carolyn’s Uncle’s church. The note from Mac tells Car­olyn not to look for him.

Car­olyn pulls out all the stops in begin­ning her search for her brother. She decides that she would go back and start from the begin­ning of the inves­ti­ga­tion. All in all she picks up a few clues on people’s feel­ings and she thinks they are hid­ing some­thing from her. With noth­ing to go on –there just are not any clues since Mac left with­out say­ing a word to any­one and no one really saw him leave.

Low and behold, the detec­tive that Car­olyn even­tu­ally talks with thinks that Mac is behind the dis­ap­pear­ance of a girl that lives in her neigh­bor­hood. This is a poor assess­ment of blame to follow-up on; But with noth­ing much more to go on, why not? I am sur­prised that some­one finally fig­ured out what was going on but not fast enough to keep Car­olyn from being abducted. From this point in the book I expected more but what I got was a fizzle.

The start of the book was a very slow and had too many char­ac­ters by my stan­dards. I had to go back just to remem­ber who was who and where they fit­ted in the story. I must admit that I skipped para­graphs. While the title is catchy, it reminds me of the shows on cable TV that asks the ques­tion of by gone stars and child actors and actresses – Where are they now?

This was a first read of this author’s work and I expected a bet­ter plot. I went to the back of the book and read the con­clu­sion because I wanted to know whether this mun­dane story was worth stay­ing up late to fin­ish. I have read other nov­els that have been so com­pelling and each page was like every­thing you wish you could eat but dared not. Sadly, for this book I can­not say that. The end­ing was a let down. The wrap up of the novel seems to be just that a fast wrap up. I placed a book mark in the book and went to bed. I hope that the next book will be a bet­ter read. C is what I would give this book.

*****

This review was writ­ten by avid reader Agatha, who enjoys read­ing almost any­thing as long as it enter­tains. She will be con­tribut­ing the occa­sional review at avid​bookreader​.com.

Tech­no­rati Tags: , , ,