When journalist Marcia DeCarlo (Carley) learns that Nick Spencer the head of the medical research company Gen-Stone has disappeared, presumed dead, his private plane having crashed on route to Puerto Rico, she recalls the vibrant man that she met a few years ago, who had so impressed her when he spoke of his work in the development of an anti-cancer vaccine, and she is saddened, as are his employees and the many people who knew him, by the loss to the world of so caring a man.
Two weeks later when it is announced that millions of dollars are missing from the company and that the miracle cure vaccine for cancer is worthless, the grief of his staff and invertors turns to anger. A charismatic man who spoke passionately of his work wherever he went he had encouraged many people to invest their savings in his company with the promise of not only doing good for those they loved suffering from cancer, but also of rich monetary rewards when the drug was released.
Just four years earlier Carley's mother had married the father of Nick Spencer's second wife Lynn, and although Carley and Lynn have met on only a couple of occasions since that time, Lynn asks her stepsister to help her prove that she was not her husbands accomplice in the deception. Carley's investigation takes her back to Nick's boyhood home where she meets Dr Philip Broderick who knew Nick's father Dr Edward Spencer. Keen to speak with some of the employees of the company she finds Charles Wallingford, the chairman of the board of Geb-Stone reluctant to let her, she does however manage to speak with Nick's secretary Vivian Powers. Never completely convinced of Nick's guilt as Carley learns more of the events leading up to the plane crash she begins to wonder if he was guilty or set-up.
This struck me as good old-fashioned stuff, and I enjoyed it. But it was predictable,
I was pretty sure as soon as they were introduced, who were wearing the white
hats and who the black. As my dad used to say when we were watching the old
black and white Cowboys and Indians movies. You can tell he's a baddie, he's
wearing a black hat'. This book didn't have any of those breathtaking surprises
that some of the new authors engender in their books, but I found it an enjoyable
read, in the comfortable, no startling surprises category.
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Lizzie Hayes
Mary Higgins Clark is the author of 25 books.