Pretend You Don't See Her » (Abridged)

Mary Higgins Clark likes to delve into different worlds in her crackerjack novels of suspense; but while the milieus change, her stories are always compelling. As she puts it: "I write about people going about their daily lives, not looking for trouble, who are suddenly plunged into menacing situations."

Pretend You Don't See Her is the story of Lacey Farrell, a rising star on Manhattan's high-powered real estate scene. Lacey becomes the witness to a murder and hears the dying words of the victim, a woman who is convinced that her attacker was after a diary her daughter had kept up until the day she supposedly took her own life. Lacey gives the diary to the police -- but not before she makes a copy for herself.

Obliged to give up her family, her job, her very identity, Lacey is placed in the Witness Protection Program. She must assume a new life, at least until the killer can be found and brought to trial...But she soon realizes that her sanctuary is not safe. Lacey is caught in a race against time as she tries to uncover what happened before she is killed herself...

Publishers Weekly

There's no arguing with success, and no doubt Clark's eager following will lap up her 13th romantic suspense novel as eagerly as ever. All the elements are in place: an appealing, plucky working-girl heroine placed in instant danger; a virile, adoring would-be lover kept at arm's length until the curtain; a cute moppet (also in danger); a doting but somewhat foolish mother; a dead dad whose spirit is ever-present in times of crisis. What's lacking is any real suspense, or, in this case, a satisfactory windup. Lacey Farrell is a comely young real estate saleswoman in Manhattan who has a client, Isabelle Waring, murdered virtually before her eyes, then has to spend most of the book on the run from the killer, whom only she can identify. In the process she goes into the witness protection program, and the most interesting part of the novel (Clark is always good on research) is the details on how this works. The plot however, involving Isabelle's certainty that her daughter was murdered, the suspicion that falls on the wealthy man who owns Lacey's real estate firm and his scapegrace son, and a hit man who remorselessly pursues Laceyis perfunctory in the extreme. When the real villain is finally unmaskedin a few throwaway sentences the reader has almost forgotten he existed and is given no clue as to how and why he did all his evil deeds. Maybe 13 isn't Clark's lucky number. Literary Guild main selection