A Cry in the Night

Mary Higgins Clark

10/24/2000

Jenny Hartley works at an art gallery in New York City. A new artist is showing his work, including a portrait of his mother. Jenny looks strikingly like the woman in the painting. The artist, Erich Krueger, meets her and immediately falls in love with her. Within a month they are married. Erich has convinced her ex-husband to release their two daughters. The new family returns to his farm in Minnesota.

Something is wrong there. Erich exhibits some possessiveness that bothers Jenny. He will not change things in the house, leaving them the way they were when his mother was alive twenty-five years earlier. Her daughters report she is checking on them in the night without her remembering. The farm and house employees are very careful when Erich is around. She sends letters that are not answered.

Then her ex-husband comes to Minnesota. Jenny meets him once in town to give him money. Then he calls threatening to reclaim his daughters. He supposedly receives a phone call from Jenny and drives up to their home. But he never arrives. When the sheriff starts questioning her, Jenny starts questioning herself. Erich starts questioning her love and faithfulness. She reassures him of her feelings. Yet what has she been doing? Has she been having amnesia spells?

Chilling. Emotionally wrenching. Those are perfect descriptions for the feelings this book brings out. By the first third of the book I was shivering inwardly. I was reading this book at work (with permission) in a well lit, very populated area. Yet the more I read, the more lonely and edgy I felt. When I put the book down I had to shake off a palpable darkness that I felt surrounded me. Tomorrow I'm taking something lighter to work!!!!

This is an excellent book. Glimpses of the truth are seen early in the tale. There are still surprises at the end, even when the reader thinks the plot has been revealed. It is stories like this that make Mary Higgins Clark so popular in her genre. I recommend you do not read this alone at night in a quiet !house...brrrrrrr.

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