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On the Street Where You Live by Mary Higgins Clark
Book Summary InformationAuthor: Mary Higgins Clark Edition: Mass Market Paperback Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published) Published: 2002-04-01 ISBN: 0671004530 Number of pages: 432 Publisher: Pocket Books
Book Reviews of On the Street Where You LiveBook Review: Past and Present Murderers Summary: 5 Stars
Once again Mary Higgins Clark wrote another great book called On The Street Where You Live. As was the usual with her books, I had to first get acquainted with all of the characters to be able to identify each one when she talked about them. This book was also great because there were many possible choices of who the killer could be. So here is a short summary of what the book was about. Back in 1892 there was a man who murdered three women. The first one, Madeline Shapley, was murdered on September 7, 1891. Then on August 5, 1893 Letitia Gregg was murdered. Finally on March 31, 1896 the last victim, Ellen Swain, was murdered. Over 100 years later a guy found the murderer from the 1890's book he wrote in and decided to kill three women on the same days. The first victim, Martha Lawrence, was killed September 7, 1995 and was found whenever Emily Graham, a criminal defense attorney, bought a house and contractors were digging up the ground to put in a pool. The cops came and they found her body holding a finger in her hand. The detectives dug farther and found another body. They realized the finger was in Martha's hand so when she was found cops would realized she was connected with the murder from 1891. Emily Graham was frightened by this discovery, but continued to live her life. A few days after the discovery she got a post card in the mail that had an address on it. Then it said Letitia Gregg and Carla Harper, who was killed August 5, 1997. Emily took the postcard to the police and they quickly took a backhoe to the site the postcard said and began digging. They soon found the body of Carla Harper and she was holding a pair of old-fashioned earrings in her hand so they would know she was connected to the 1893 murder of Letitia Gregg. During the time of finding the bodies Emily also received pictures that someone had taken of her while she was standing in different places at her house. She soon became paranoid because when she lived in New York there was a guy that had stalked her and she was afraid that now in New Jersey there was a guy stalking her again. She decided to call her friend from New York to install security cameras around her house so if the stalker decided to deliver any more pictures of her she would be able to get his identity from the tape. Since March 31 was only three days away from when Carla Harper's body was found, police began to get nervous because they knew somebody was going to get killed. When March 31, 2000 approached and became evening the police thought maybe someone would not get killed until they decided to stop by Emily Graham's house. As they approached the house they saw someone getting ready to strangle Emily. They knew she would be dead until they got into the house, so they stood outside of the window and shot the murderer before he had a chance to kill Emily. The police then went into Emily's house and everyone was okay and no one got killed that day. This book was kind of hard to follow at the beginning because it kept jumping back and forth between the 1890's and the present day. After the first chapter though I was able to understand the rest of the book. As I said before, this was a really great book. The time I spent reading it I enjoyed myself because it was so exciting not knowing whom the killer was. Anyone would enjoy reading this because it would make any sort of book lover like this book.
Summary of On the Street Where You LiveIn the gripping new novel from the Queen of Suspense, a woman is haunted by two grisly murders separated by more than a century, yet somehow, inextricably linked... ON THE STREET WHERE YOU LIVE Following a nasty divorce and the trauma of being stalked, criminal defense attorney Emily Graham leaves Albany to work in Manhattan. Craving roots, she buys her ancestral home, a Victorian house in the seaside resort town of Spring Lake, New Jersey. Her family sold the house in 1892, after one of Emily's forebears, Madeline Shapley, then a young girl, disappeared. As the house is renovated and a pool dug, a skeleton is found and identiWed as Martha Lawrence, a young Spring Lake woman who vanished several years ago. Within her hand is the Wnger bone of another woman, with a ring -- a Shapley family heirloom -- still on it. Determined to Wnd the connection between the two murders, Emily becomes a threat to a seductive killer...who chooses her as the next victim. Emily Graham knows what it's like to have enemies. The pretty New York attorney--a millionaire due to a lucky stock market break--has been sued by her greedy ex-husband and stalked by a man who thinks she helped his mother's murderer escape punishment. But when she buys her great-great-grandmother's childhood home in the sleepy resort town of Spring Lake, Emily thinks her new life will be saner, even though five other young women, including Emily's ancestor Madeline Shapley, have disappeared from Spring Lake under creepy circumstances over the past century. No sooner has Emily moved in than she starts receiving frightening, anonymous messages. Worse, when she breaks ground for a backyard pool, the backhoe brings up the body of Martha Lawrence, who vanished four years ago, and whose dead hand clutches the finger bone of Madeline Shapley, identified by her sapphire ring. Both women disappeared on September 7, 105 years apart. When the cops and Emily realize that a similar parallel exists between two other missing women and that the anniversary of yet another girl's disappearance is fast approaching, they quickly surmise that a sixth murder will be attempted in just a week. But by whom? Is today's serial killer a copycat of the Spring Lake murderer of the 1890s--or a reincarnation? Fueled by fear, anger, and scary little notes from the killer, Emily's actively researching the murders, but even she doesn't realize how many suspects there are: the retired college president, who's being blackmailed, and his perpetually angry wife; the town's bankrupt restaurateur with a weakness for pretty blondes; the middle-aged detective with his finger right on the pulse of the crimes. Even Emily's friend Eric, the software CEO who made her rich, and Nick, her new coworker, seem to show up at suspiciously convenient times. Mary Higgins Clark's cast of characters may be overly large; in going for quantity she skimps on the characterization, and all of them, including Emily, are as wooden as Al Gore. But characterization isn't what's made this 24-book author a bestseller-list regular. The cleverly complex plot gallops along at a great clip, the little background details are au courant, and the identities of both murderers come as an enjoyable surprise. On the Street Where You Live just may be Clark's best in years. --Barrie Trinkle
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