Bestselling author Mary Higgins Clark passes away at age 92

PTI, Feb 1, 2020, 10:37 AM IST

New York: Mary Higgins Clark, the tireless and long-reigning “Queen of Suspense” whose tales of women beating the odds made her one of the world’s most popular writers, died Friday at age 92.

Her publisher, Simon & Schuster, announced that she died in Naples, Florida, of natural causes.

“Nobody ever bonded more completely with her readers than Mary did,” her longtime editor Michael Korda said in a statement.

“She understood them as if they were members of her own family. She was always absolutely sure of what they wanted to read and, perhaps more important, what they didn’t want to read and yet she managed to surprise them with every book,” he added.

A widow with five children in her late 30s, she became a perennial best-seller over the second half of her life, writing or co-writing “A Stranger Is Watching,” “Daddy’s Little Girl” and more than 50 other favorites.

Sales topped 100 million copies and honors came from all over, whether a Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters in France or a “Grand Master” statuette back home from the Mystery Writers of America.

Many of her books, including “A Stranger is Watching” and “Lucky Day,” were adapted for movies and television. She also collaborated on several novels with her daughter, Carol Higgins Clark.

Mary Higgins Clark specialized in women triumphing over danger, such as the besieged young prosecutor in “Just Take My Heart” or the mother of two and art gallery worker whose second husband is a madman in “A Cry in the Night.”

Mary Clark’s goal as an author was simple, if rarely easy: keep the readers reading.

“You want to turn the page,” she told The Associated Press in 2013.

“There are wonderful sagas you can thoroughly enjoy a section and put it down. But if you’re reading my book, I want you stuck with reading the next paragraph. The greatest compliment I can receive is, ‘I read your darned book ’til 4 in the morning, and now I’m tired.’ I say, ‘Then you get your money’s worth,'” she added.

“Aspire to the Heavens” was published in 1969. It was “a triumph,” she recalled in her memoir “Kitchen Privileges,” but also a folly.

The publisher was sold near the book’s release and received little attention. She regretted the title and learned that some stores placed the book in religious sections.

Her compensation was USD 1,500, minus commission. (The novel was reissued decades later, far more successfully, as “Mount Vernon: A Love Story”).