THE SECOND TIME AROUND by Mary Higgins Clark
Mary Higgins Clark has been writing suspense fiction for several years now and each book she writes heads straight for the best seller list. Her latest, THE SECOND TIME AROUND, is no exception to this rule. As soon as it hit the bookstores it was on its way to best seller heaven.
Tearing her plot from today's headlines, Clark takes us inside the dog eat dog world of competitive pharmaceutical companies. Nicholas Spencer, a multimillionaire, has crashed his airplane and is presumed dead. He was a man on whom many had pinned their hopes and dreams. He had promised a drug that would be a cure for cancer and the world arrived at his doorstep with pledges of money and support.
Then the tests began to be not so promising. Plus Spencer had seemingly removed large amounts of money from his company. Now he was presumed dead, but the body had not been found. Rumors began circulating that he had staged his death and that he was alive and well, and living the good life in Europe.
Marcia "Carley" DeCarlo had met Spencer and had been won over by his charm, and passion for his potential product in the fight against cancer. She had even bought some of the stock in his company on faith in his integrity and skills. So she like many others suffered a loss when he "died" and his company was deemed worthless.
As a writer for a financial paper she now had the job of covering the story. She also had a personal connection as her stepsister, Lynn, had been Spencer's second wife. As she begins to dig into this story she uncovers some strange discrepancies into the actual facts of the case.
While Carley is starting her investigation, a deranged man is planning to kill those he thinks are responsible for causing him to lose the money he invested in Spencer's company. He plans to kill Lynn and also Carley. For some bizarre reason he holds her responsible just because of her relationship to Lynn.
Clark has all these threads of plot swirling as she tells her story. It makes for interesting if not engrossing reading. The characters are not fully enough developed, nor is the plot tense enough, to really grab the readers' interest.
Clark always uses old song titles for the titles of her books. In this case she chose "The Second Time Around." Nice song, nice song title, but it has absolutely nothing to do with the plot of this story.
This is an adequate Clark story but it is not her best. You get the impression her publisher was due a book so she churned this one out. It serves the purpose of feeding her fans appetite for a new book, but it isn't a feast that will keep them satisfied for very long.
THE SECOND TIME AROUND is published by Simon and Schuster. It contains 302 pages and sells for $26.00.