All Dressed in White by Mary Higgins Clark

Reviewed by Gerti

This is the second novel I’ve read where famed mystery writer Mary Higgins Clark teams up with Alafair Burke, and I must say, it’s better than their first joint effort! I have to praise “All Dressed in White” for not suffering from an overabundance of characters, with all those presented pretty clearly delineated. The plot is also less than simple, even if the villain in the end turns out to be less than plausible.

In the series, Clark and Burke are writing mysteries for a character named Laurie Moran to present in her Under Suspicion television specials. Each show in the series is supposed to be about a cold case, generally about wealthy, beautiful people, and this case is no different. It’s about “The Runaway Bride”, a woman named Amanda Pierce, who survived cancer to end up at the altar, planning to marry a poor-boy turned lawyer who wants to become a public defender. The wrinkle in the fairy tale is this – her maid-of-honor Meghan also had a crush on this fellow, named Jeffrey, and Amanda’s parents suspect he may be the man behind her disappearance and murder.

Laurie and her wacky team of producers dig up his past, learning that Jeffrey was also pictured with a girl from their college days who disappeared. Is he a serial killer? Or is it his crazy stalker wife behind both murders? The plot takes you in one direction, and then another, as Laurie and her team are helped by her retired NYC detective father to track down clues to the real identity of the person who took Amanda away all those years ago.

Add to the suspect list Amanda’s older sister, who inherited her place in the successful family business thanks to Amanda’s untimely disappearance. Charlotte is, as described in the book, “a weed growing next to a rose” in the family’s eyes, and both mother and father give her short shrift. Amanda’s mother is still obsessed with her one daughter’s disappearance, and that has led to a rift between the long-married couple, since the dad is tired of all the stress and just wants them all to go back to their normal lives, under the assumption that Amanda was dead, or if not dead, wanted to go missing, so probably happier after she ran away.

This book provides little sexual tension between TV producer Laurie and her sexy show host, the famed lawyer Alex, and that makes this book a little less exciting than the previous edition, since there is virtually no romance in this novel. Still, the mystery is good enough to hold your attention, and the twists and turns will keep you guessing. I applaude “All Dressed in White” for being a good effort by this writing duo, although not the best book Clark has ever written. And as I mentioned before, the villain, when unmasked, seems implausible. I’d have chosen the wimpier of the pair of friends to be the one with deep-seated psychological problems.