Daddy's Little Girl - Mary Higgins Clark

3/5

I remember reading MHC as a young adult and I remember having really enjoyed her books then. One novella in particular - The Anastasia Syndrome (part of a little short story collection) had bowled me over and I think I've read that story multiple times over since. That and a couple of other novels of hers like All around the Town, and the Alvirah Meehan stories kind of embedded MHC in my mind as an author who I've loved to read and would therefore, by default always love to read. That's why I picked up this book from my mum's bookshelf in the first place. I wasn't enthralled as I had expected to be.

'Daddy's little girl' centers around a young investigative journalist - Ellie Cavanaugh who was deeply scarred as a seven-year old, when she discovered that her beautiful and beloved older sister had been murdered. It was Ellie who discovered the body, and that trauma combined with having to testify against the alleged killer and having to bear the guilt of not having done something sooner' follow Ellie through her teenage years through to her adult life. When the Killer - Rob Westerfield - charming and handsome heir to the vast Westerfield family fortune gets out of prison on parole after having served his time of 22 years and maintained his innocence all through, he develops a sizeable following of people who either believe he was innocent all along and had been wrongly accused, or those who feel that he may be the killer but had served his time and therefore was justified to return to society. Firmly convinced that she has always been right about him and consumed by the long-lasting guilt and need to set records straight, Ellie sets out on a single woman crusade to prove the naysayors wrong. The entire story is about Ellie's investigations as she digs deeper and deeper culminating in long buried secrets bubbling to the surface and a resolution in the final two chapters. A four page Epilogue neatly rounds off the story and provides closure as Ellie's life events come full circle.

At 384 pages long, the book is a decent length, typical of a suspense novel and is also fairly fast paced in characteristic MCH style. She does not waste words or time on flowery language or evocative imagery, she gets right down to the brass tacks and allows the plot to drive the story. While I wasn't expecting floral language, at the risk of sounding preachy, I did find the language and sentence structures wanting in several places. The frequent use of the passive voice when active voice would have been stronger, for example. I also found the dialogue to be very contrived all throughout and I found myself thinking on multiple occasions "that's not how two people would naturally have a conversation". I was also constantly reminded of how old I am everytime she made an allusion to The Website (capital W). Given that this book was written and published more than two decades ago, when the internet was still more of an intrigue than the inextricable part of daily life it is today, when a website was more of a fascinating concept than the central pillar of all business and life as it is today. So I don't fault the author on that front. It is just a stark reminder though of just how much the world has changed since the early 2000s.

All in all, I found the book to be an interesting read, though not as thrilling, and as a consequence, not one that would remain etched in my mind and subconsciously make me want to return to MCH again, unless propelled by pure nostalgia. The hooks, twists and turns at the end of each chapter did keep me turning the pages, but the book overall did not strike me as strictly 'un-putdownable'. Definitely not in the calibre of the works of some of the golden oldies like Christie or Conan Doyle, or modern greats like Stephen King, Gillian Flynn, or John Grisham. Still, I'd like to acknowledge the prolific writer that MCH was - with all her 51 books becoming a bestseller in the USA and Europe, and many of her books still in print, she remains one of the most beloved and well-known suspense novelists of our time.