Hide Yourself Away

It may not be the Great American Novel, but this book was certainly enjoyable. It has a similar style to her other books, and I was definitely surprised by the ending. I read it on a six hour airplane flight, and it was good enough to take my mind off of my fear of flying! If you like her other books, you'll like this one.

One of the editorial reviews said 'plodding". NO!! Great read, hard to put down, engaging characters. Loved it.

At KEY-TV, four interns compete for the position of assistant producer's for the news show KEY to America. The rivals are all in Newport trying to persuade producer, B.J. D'Elia to select them. The least confident, but most needy of the rivals is thirty-two old single mom Grace Callahan. Besides feeling inadequate next to the competitors, Grace feels guilty that she left her preadolescent daughter Lucy behind with her philandering former husband and his wife, especially since they want custody of the child. Almost to the arrival of the news crew is the brutal murder of Madeleine Sloan, whose corpse was found at the bottom of the Forty Steps of the City by the Sea. Locals become concerned because fourteen years ago Madeleine's mother vanished, but now her remains have been found in an underground railroad tunnel. Soon the interns are murdered leaving Grace the job by default; others also are killed while Grace tries to uncover the identity of the serial killer before she joins the rapidly rising count. The Key to the latest news mystery is the beleaguered amazing Grace who serves as an unconfident fine center to the suspense thriller. However, the support cast is stereotyped so that they come from set moulds like the intern rivals regardless of race, national origin or gender seem identical viz a viz Grace. The story line consists of short chapters so that every New Englander seems guilty of the murders, but that hurts the tale as too many souls become suspect and interchangeable. Still fans of Mary Jane Clark will enjoy Grace's efforts to be the last intern breathing. Harriet Klausner

KEY News travels to Newport, Rhode Island, just in time to solve a 14-year-old murder while putting on a weeklong morning show. The closer Grace Callahan, a new KEY intern in her 30s, gets to solving the mystery, the closer she gets to digging her own grave -- and maybe the graves of her fellow interns, too: a murderer who has escaped detection for a decade and a half won't stop at killing again. A modern-day "Murder under the Sun," Clark updates Christie's mayhem with suspects-a-plenty in America's First Resort. The clues are all there, with a heroine you root for all the way -- and it's a rollicking ride to the finish. I couldn't put it down!

A page-turner, to be sure. I didn't guess the killer until the very end (in fact, I was sure it was everyone but the real killer -- still nothing can beat the ending of this author's NOWHERE TO RUN.) You'll be fascinated by Newport, Rhode Island too. Unbelievable history woven into this.