Review of The Shadow of Your Smile by Mary Higgins Clark

From Oklahoma's NewsOK --

Book Review: Secrets of faith, fortune interplay
Suspense: Best-selling author offers twists --

By: Betty Lytle --
April 11, 2010 --

"The Shadow of Your Smile” (Simon & Schuster, $25) by Mary Higgins Clark is a fast-paced suspense novel that draws the reader in with the first few pages and doesn’t let go until the climatic ending.



Olivia Morrow, 82, has kept a family secret all her life. Her deceased cousin, Sister Catherine, a nun, is about to be beatified. Before she entered the convent, Catherine had conceived a child. The man who fathered the child, Alexander Gannon, invented orthopedic devices that made him a fortune. Catherine’s granddaughter is Dr. Monica Farrell, a pediatrician in a New York City hospital. Should Olivia reveal this secret, Monica would be entitled to her rightful inheritance. But if she tells, the information could jeopardize Catherine’s beatification.

Catherine is being considered for beatification because she was founder of several children’s hospitals and because of her work with children. Michael O’Keefe, a 5-year-old diagnosed with terminal brain cancer, was deemed beyond hope. His mother organized a prayer crusade to Sister Catherine, and Michael’s cancer disappeared. The boy was Monica’s patient. Though skeptical of prayer’s power to heal, she agrees to testify at the beatification hearing that his recovery is beyond medical knowledge and likely a miracle.

Monica learns from a limo driver, the father of one of her patients, that an elderly passenger, Olivia Morrow, told him she knew Monica’s birth grandmother. Monica’s father, who was adopted, spent nearly his whole life searching for his birth parents. Monica calls Olivia and arranges to see her the next day. But when Monica gets there, Olivia is dead.

This is a great story, in bookstores Tuesday, with many twists and turns that mystery fans should enjoy.