Dying for Mercy » (Reprint)

Mary Jane Clark is the New York Times bestselling author of twelve novels, including When Day Breaks and It Only Takes a Moment. A former writer and producer at CBS News in New York City, she knows intimately the world of which she writes. The daughter of an FBI agent and mother of two, she lives in New Jersey and Florida.

When death shatters the serenity of the exclusive moneyed enclave of Tuxedo Park, New York, Eliza Blake, co-host of KEY to America, is on the scene. While attending a lavish gala at her friends' newly renovated estate, Pentimento, Eliza's host is found dead a grotesque suicide that is the first act in a macabre and intricately conceived plan to expose sins of the past involving some of the town's most revered citizens.

Determined to find the truth, Eliza and her KEY News colleagues discover that Pentimento holds the key. The glorious mansion is actually a giant "puzzle house", filled with ingenious clues that lead them, one by one, to the victims of a fiendish killer.

As Pentimento gives up its secrets it becomes clear that no amount of wealth or privilege will keep the residents of Tuxedo Park safe. But just when she unearths one final surprise, Eliza comes face to face with a murderer who believes that some puzzles should never be solved.

Publishers Weekly

At the start of bestseller Clark's smooth third Eliza Blake puzzler (after It Only Takes a Moment), the KEY to AmericaTV host is looking forward to attending a party to celebrate the feast day of St. Francis of Assisi at Ennis and Valentina Wheelock's newly renovated villa in Tuxedo Park, N.Y. Soon after Ennis's suicide by stigmata in the villa's greenhouse puts an end to the party, someone begins killing anyone who knows too much about the Wheelocks' connection to a 20-year-old cold case involving an abandoned convertible and its missing owner, landscaper Martin O'Shaughnessy. Each murder mimics "aspects of the Passion of Jesus Christ." As Eliza and her three KEY co-workers, who have dubbed themselves the Sunrise Suspense Society, swing into action, Eliza must fight to avoid becoming headline news herself as the killer's next victim. Those curious about Tuxedo Park will appreciate the well-researched portrait of the real-life exclusive community. (Aug.)

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