The Cradle Will Fall by Mary Higgins Clark

Reviewed by Gerti

In “The Cradle Will Fall”, bestselling author Mary Higgins Clark has written yet another suspenseful tale heavy with psychological undertones. You start with the protagonist, county prosecutor Katie DeMaio. She married a judge who was older than she. But when he is diagnosed with cancer right after they return from their honeymoon, the honeymoon is over for them, literally. He dies soon after, and she is left grieving for him, alone in his beautiful, large, expensive house.

Besides the daddy issues which caused her to marry a man so much older, Katie has other psychological problems. She is terrified of hospitals, so after she is in a fender bender that lands her in Westlake Hospital, she’s not sure if she’s awake or dreaming when she sees a man loading a woman’s body into a car trunk. The man doing the body transfer certainly sees her, though, and her nightmare is just beginning. The villain of the piece is Dr. Edgar Highley, a man who has already disposed of several ex-wives. That night, however, it was a troublesome patient he was putting into the car. If medicine is his vocation, murder is his avocation. He married a British woman to get her title, but trouble at an English hospital sent him to the US after her untimely death. Here he meets another wealthy lady whom he charms (although the way Clark describes him in the book he doesn’t sound all that appealing!) Highley kills her for her money and house. One of her relatives is suspicious and vocal about it, but everyone thinks it’s sour grapes, since he was the rich woman’s heir before Highley came to town.

Katie has some gynecological problems. Highley is a highly regarded doctor in that field, and well, you can see where this is all going. She is scheduled to have him perform a procedure on her in his progressive clinic, but he’s determined to kill her for what she’s seen, even though she’s still putting her memories on the mysterious sighting together. One man who does see things clearly is Richard Carroll, the local medical examiner who has a crush on Katie. Katie’s sister is married to a doctor, so they all know each other socially. Oddly enough, the group even partied with the dead trunk lady, Vangie, and her husband, who is suspected in her death, because he’s a pilot and had been seeing a stewardess on the sly while his wife was trying to get pregnant thru in vitro at Highley’s clinic.

Yes, I know it sounds very convoluted, but it all makes sense when you read it. The usual amount of misdirection and red herrings are peppered into Clark’s plot, but it’s pretty clear (since Clark uses the voice inside Highley’s head to narrate some chapters) that the cops are on the wrong path when they pursue the mile-high club husband and the dead woman’s psychologist. All’s well in the end, but the crazy ride is worth the trip! I thoroughly enjoyed this book, except for the dead wife’s name – Vangie – which always sounded odd to me. (How do you even pronounce that? Why didn’t MHC just call her “Angie”? There’s a story in that…) Still, terrifically suspenseful writing, and worthy of a high place in Clark’s canon of mystery novels.