‘I’ve Got You Under My Skin’ By Mary Higgins Clark

Published (USA) by Pocket Books,
24 March 2015.
ISBN: 978-1-4767-4908-2 (PB)

Published (UK) by Simon & Schuster,
12 Feb 2015.
ISBN: 978-1-47113-286-5 (PB)

I never realized how often Mary Higgins Clark used a song tune as a book title, until I started humming the eponymous Cole Porter song.  What it has to do with the plot, however, is not so apparent to me.  This is the story of two murders and how they somehow tie together.  The first victim is the husband of Laurie Moran, a television producer; the other, the suffocation death of Betsy Powell, 20 years earlier, on the night of a gala party her wealthy husband gave for her daughter and three friends upon their graduation from college.

What links the two events is that Laurie conceives a TV series based on recreating unsolved murders and selects the Powell mystery for the pilot, inviting Mr. Powell and the four women to participate.  The hope, of course, is that the guilty party will somehow blunder on camera and admit to committing the deed.  Any suspense is created by the statement of Laurie’s husband’s murderer that he was first, to be followed by the killing of her and their young son.

One can almost feel the author plotting the novel, carefully constructing the tale building block by building block.  It is so carefully put together that one can anticipate the next sentence.  The book is typical of one written by this author, filled with descriptions of what the women are wearing, and the décor of the rooms and grounds where events take place.  Not that these are negatives.  The novel is certainly well-written and enjoyable.

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Reviewer:  Ted Feit

Mary Higgins Clark is the author of twenty-two worldwide bestselling works of fiction and a memoir. She lives in Saddle River, New Jersey, with her husband.

Ted and Gloria Feit live in Long Beach, NY, a few miles outside New York City.  For 26 years, Gloria was the manager of a medium-sized litigation firm in lower Manhattan. Her husband, Ted, is an attorney and former stock analyst, publicist and writer/editor for, over the years, several daily, weekly and monthly publications.  Having always been avid mystery readers, and since they're now retired, they're able to indulge that passion.  Their reviews appear online as well as in three print publications in the UK and US.  On a more personal note: both having been widowed, Gloria and Ted have five children and nine grandchildren between them.