The Shadow of Your Smile by Mary Higgins Clark

I think I have read everything that Mary Higgins Clark has written. I've always found her books to be good for a fairly mindless read but a good story. A couple of her older books creeped the heck out of me! So, whenever she has a new book come out, I always make a point of reading it.

Ok, so this is a story about beatification hearings for a nun who helped sick children and who (after her death) apparently cured a terminally ill child of brain cancer because his mother had prayed to this nun. The catch is, this nun (Sister Catherine) had given birth just before she went into the convent and there are two people who know the truth about who fathered that child; Sister Catherine's cousin and the doctor who cared for the cousin's mother (Sister Catherine's aunt, of course). Turns out that the father of this child was a multimillionaire who left a huge fortune to a charitable foundation whose board members have made themselves beneficiaries of a lot of the money. So, to keep their evil doings a secret, someone related to the foundation has decided to kill off Sister Catherine's cousin, as well as the one surviving descendant of that child that Sister Catherine gave up for adoption, Dr. Monica Farrell.

Sadly, this book was not at all up to MHC's usual quality. The most annoying thing, to me, was the way that she inserted the thoughts of the characters as a key storytelling device. Long sections of background are given as a characters thoughts... and it is really not done in a smooth or believable way. I actually complained to my husband as I was reading the book that this style was making me nuts. The actual story was engaging once I got past the storytelling. There wasn't a whole lot of suspense here, though. The author reveals from the beginning most of the information about the bad guy(s) and what they are going to do, so that is a bit of a letdown. I think that MHC is having trouble keeping up with the times a bit, also, as some of the actions and dialog of some of the younger characters seemed a little out of date. The ending is also a disappointment, with the final conflict played out in an unreal and hurried way and the "big reveal" is simply told to us by a character. Overall, I really was underwhelmed by this book. I hope that this isn't an indication that MHC is losing her touch.