Novelist
Born: December 24, 1927;
Died: January 31, 2020.
MARY Higgins Clark, who has died aged 92, was a multi-million-selling American novelist known for her plot-twisting, page-turning mysteries and thrillers. If one of her literary heroines, Agatha Christie, was known as the Queen of Crime, Higgins Clark, in the eyes of her fans, was the Queen of Suspense.
In many ways, her books mirrored Christie’s: there was no gratuitous violence or sex, and the heroines were usually clean-living and church-going. However, the books were also often inspired by current trends or new stories; over the years, Higgins Clark had written about human cloning, child abuse and in vitro fertilisation, and her most recent book, Kiss the Girls and Make Them Cry, was inspired by #MeToo and followed a journalist who receives a tip about sexual misconduct allegations at a TV news network.
The wholesome characters were a badge of honour for Higgins Clark, who was brought up a Catholic in the Bronx. When she was 11, she came home from Mass one day to find that her father had died; she would suffer another terrible bereavement in her 30s when her husband, Warren Clark, also died. His death meant that Higgins Clark needed to earn money for her young children and, as well as writing copy for an ad agency, she slogged away on novels before taking her children to school.
In her memoir, Kitchen Privileges, she wrote of an “aching, yearning burning” to write, but it did not come easily: she received 40 rejection letters before she sold her first short story. In the early days, when she was struggling, she would pawn jewellery to keep going; later, when she was a huge success, she would celebrate the publication of each book by buying a new jewel or gem.
Her first novel, a biographical story about George Washington, did not sell well, but when she switched to thrillers with her second, 1975’s Where Are The Children?, she found a formula that worked, and for her follow-up, A Stranger Is Watching, she received a million-dollar advance. At the peak of her success in the 1980s, she became the first author to sign an eight-figure deal, thanks to a contract that guaranteed her at least $10 million. For most of her career, she settled into a groove of producing one novel, sometimes two, a year. Many of her books were made into films and TV series, and she is estimated to have sold some 100 million books in the US alone.
For Higgins Clark, it was all about the suspense rather than the violence or the sex. “I’m no prude,” she said, “but I think there’s a way you can tell a story that will grip you without that... the story should be one that makes you jump. Like Alfred Hitchcock - you know, the footsteps on the stairs, the knob that turns, reaching for the cellphone that slips out of your hands. It still works for me.”
As well as her thrillers, she wrote a series of novels with her daughter Carol, as well as a children’s book and short stories. Her aim, she said, was to write about “nice people whose lives are invaded”. She was married twice after being widowed, firstly to Raymond Charles Ploetz, a lawyer, and then to John Conheeney, a former Merrill Lynch executive, who died in 2018. Higgins Clark is survived by her five children, six grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.
MARK SMITH
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