The Christmas Thief: A Novel [Mass Market Paperback]

Mary Higgins Clark (Author), Carol Higgins Clark (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 31, 2006

Mary Higgins Clark, America’s Queen of Suspense, and her daughter, bestselling mystery writer Carol Higgins Clark, have again joined forces to create a suspenseful and humorous holiday tale.

The folks who picked a beautiful eighty-foot blue spruce from Stowe, Vermont, to be Rockefeller Center’s famous Christmas tree don’t have a clue that Packy Noonan, a scam artist just released from prison, hid priceless diamonds in it more than twelve years ago. But when Packy learns that his special tree will be heading to New York City the next morning, he knows he has to act fast.

What Packy does not know is that Alvirah, everyone’s favorite lottery winner turned amateur sleuth, and savvy private investigator Regan Reilly are visiting Stowe with their friend Opal, who lost all her lottery winnings in Packy’s scam. And just when they’re supposed to head home, they learn that the tree is missing . . . and that Opal has disappeared.

--This text refers to the Kindle Edition edition.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Mother and daughter Clark, each a bestseller in her own right, have produced a singularly slight and unmemorable tale with their third holiday suspense novel (after 2001's He Sees You When You're Sleeping). This time the villainy centers on an 80-foot Vermont spruce earmarked for the traditional Christmas tree lighting at Rockefeller Center. Unbeknownst to the tree's owners, its branches contain millions of dollars' worth of diamonds, secreted there more than a decade earlier by con man Packy Noonan to conceal the proceeds of an investment scam. One of the scam's victims happens to be vacationing near the site of the planned tree-cutting, along with Alvirah and Willy Meehan, who successfully resolved a kidnapping in their previous caper. When Packy is finally paroled, he heads straight for the treasure, enmeshing him, his confederates, the Meehans and a bevy of other characters in vandalism, abduction and other crimes. Unfortunately, there's no mystery concerning who's doing what or why and little sense of menace or suspense. Classic mystery fans may be amused by the contemporary take on Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes story "The Adventure of the Six Napoleons," but many readers, including those devoted to the Clarks' solo efforts, will be disappointed.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

About the Author

Mary Higgins Clark's books are world-wide bestsellers. In the U.S. alone, her books have sold over one hundred million copies.

She is the author of thirty-one previous suspense novels. Her first book, a biographical novel about George Washington, was re-issued with the title, Mount Vernon Love Story, in June 2002. Her memoir, Kitchen Privileges, was published by Simon & Schuster in November 2002. Her first children's book, Ghost Ship, illustrated by Wendell Minor, was published in April 2007 as a Paula Wiseman Book/Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers.

She is co-author, with her daughter Carol Higgins Clark, of five holiday suspense novels Deck the Halls (2000), He Sees You When You're Sleeping (2001), The Christmas Thief (2004), Santa Cruise (2006), and Dashing through the Snow (2008).

Mary Higgins Clark was chosen by Mystery Writers of America as Grand Master of the 2000 Edgar Awards. An annual Mary Higgins Clark Award sponsored by Simon & Schuster, to be given to authors of suspense fiction writing in the Mary Higgins Clark tradition, was launched by Mystery Writers of America during Edgars week in April 2001. She was the 1987 president of Mystery Writers of America and, for many years, served on their Board of Directors. In May 1988, she was Chairman of the International Crime Congress.

Visit her on the web at www.maryhigginsclark.com.

Carol Higgins Clark is the author of fourteen previous bestselling Regan Reilly mysteries. She is coauthor, along with her mother, Mary Higgins Clark, of a bestselling holiday mystery series. Also an actress, Carol Higgins Clark studied at the Beverly Hills Playhouse and has recorded several of her mother's works as well as her own novels. She received AudioFile's Earphones Award of Excellence for her reading of Jinxed. She lives in New York City.

Her website is www.carolhigginsclark.com.

Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 336 pages
• Publisher: Pocket Books (October 31, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0743272250
• ISBN-13: 978-0743272254
• Product Dimensions: 6.7 x 4 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 2.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (37 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,146,990 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #50 in Books > 4-for-3 Books > Mystery & Thrillers > Authors, A-Z > ( C ) > Clark, Mary Higgins

More About the Author

If I were to define myself in one sentence, I would say, "I'm a nice Irish Catholic girl from the Bronx."

I was a Christmas Eve baby all those years ago, the second of the three children of Nora and Luke Higgins. Mother was pushing forty when they married and my father was forty-two. My older brother was named Joseph. Nineteen months later I, Mary, was born. Three and a half years later, my little brother, John, came along.

We lived in a very nice section of the Bronx on a street off Pelham Parkway. I loved our house. I still love it. After my father died, when I was eleven, my mother had to sell it.

I went to Saint Francis Xavier Grammar School. Two years ago I went back and was Principal for a Day. Escorted by two of the tiniest children, I was led into the auditorium while the whole student body sang "Hello Mary. You're back where you belong." I still tear up thinking about it.

I was awarded a scholarship to Villa Maria Academy which is in the Pelham Bay section of the Bronx, otherwise I couldn't have afforded to set foot in it.

I went to Woods Secretarial School and at eighteen had my first full-time job as Secretary to the creative director of Remington Rand's in-house advertising agency. If I were making that choice now I would have gone to college even though God knows we needed the income. On the other hand the three years I spent in Remington Rand was a tutorial in advertising which served me well when I was widowed with five small children. Another plus was that I left Remington to be a flight stewardess with Pan American Airways and when my contemporaries were seniors in college, I was flying to Europe, Africa and Asia.

Warren Clark and I were married on December 26, 1949 and had five children in the next eight years; Marilyn, Warren, David, Carol and Patricia. Warren died of a heart attack in 1964. The highest compliment I can pay my kids are that they are like him.

I sold my first short story when I was twenty-eight. It was alled 'Stowaway'. It had been rejected forty times before a magazine in Chicago bought it for one hundred dollars.

My first book was about George Washington. It was published in 1969 and disappeared without a trace. Three years ago Simon and Schuster co-published it with the Mount Vernon Historical Society and retitled 'Mount Vernon Love Story', it became a bestseller.

My first suspense novel 'Where Are the Children' was bought in 1974 for three thousand dollars by Simon and Schuster. Thirty-three books later, I'm still with S&S.

Time to wind up - at least for the present. As soon as I sold 'Children' I enrolled in Fordham College. Went there for five years at night and earned a B.A. in Philosophy. Summa cum laude, if you please.

I never thought I'd marry again but ten years ago I threw a cocktail party on St. Patrick's day. My daughter, Pat, urged me to invite John Conheeney. Her opening words about him were, "Have I got a hunk for you!" He came to the party and we were married eight months later.

I'm Honorary Chairman of FraXa Research. My grandson, David, has the Fragile X syndrome, which is the second leading cause of retardation after Downs Syndrome. Basically the brain of the people who have it can't send out the proper signals because there's a kind of short circuit in the synapses that carry the signals. We raise money for research with the goal of finding a medication that will work around that short circuit. I go all over the country to the fund-raisers as new chapters of FraXa are opened.

I'm always asked to name my favorite book. They're ALL my favorites. If there is one book that is very special to me, it is my memoir 'Kitchen Privileges' because writing it made me relive my early life including those first struggles to become a writer. I think 'Kitchen Privileges' is both tender and funny and it's me.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

19 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Not Up To The Clarks' Usual Standards, November 18, 2004

By 

D. Bell "Imzadi" (Olney, MD USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Christmas Thief: A Novel (Hardcover)

The Christmas Thief, Mary & Carol Higgins Clark's annual Christmas fluff, is, as usual, as fast and easy read. It is, however, quite forgettable once you've done reading. Alvirah Meehan, the former cleaning lady whose life was changed when she won the lottery, and her husband Willy are heading to Stowe, Vermont, for a long weekend with their friends Nora Reagan Reilly, the detective novelist, her funeral director husband, their detective daughter Reagan Reilly, and her fiancee Jack (no relation) Reilly. Alvirah invites her friend Opal, a lottery winner who gave her money to a con man and lost it all. Besides skiing, they are looking forward to watching the cutting down of the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree. Packy, the con man who has been in jail for the last twelve years, and his two henchmen Benny and JoJo are also heading there to retrieve a flask of diamonds, his ill-gotten gains from his scam, from the giant blue spruce where he hid it before he was apprehended and sent to prison. Naturally their paths cross and, of course, Alvirah, Reagan, and their families save the day.

This is a short book, which isn't bad for an evening if there are no good programs on television or a brief car trip. I was not happy that we didn't see much of the Meehans or the Reillys.

Opal is a sympathetic character, as is Milo, the "poet" who helped Packy and his gang but didn't know he was doing anything illegal. Packy is rather nasty, so it's good to see him get his comeuppance. And the tree's owners are too obsessive about the tree and its fate. That just doesn't ring true.

I'm not sorry I bought the book, and the Amazon price was right, but it's nothing that will stick with me over the long run.

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Had Trouble Staying Awake!, November 19, 2004

By 

Susan Mordigal (CT) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Christmas Thief: A Novel (Hardcover)

Talk about resting on your laurels! I've enjoyed past collaborations between mother and daughter Clark for quick & easy reads. However, in this case, the dialogue is so base and cliche it borders on banality. The lack of interesting adjectives and descriptive language is also profound. One bit of information was grossly inaccurate: When Alvirah receives her maple syrup and instructions to "refill it at the tree" when it runs out. It takes at least 10 gallons of SAP to make one quart of maple syrup after it has boiled down! Do yourself a favor - for mysteries that deliver time after time, read anything by Diane Mott Davidson! Or for that matter, the children's book authors Avi, Beverly Cleary, CS Lewis, JK Rowling, or Andrew Clements offer much more interesting and sophisticated writing. After reading this book I had to read some Edgar Allan Poe to jog my brain awake again!

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Should be listed under Young Adult Fiction, November 28, 2004

By 

EdHopper "Painter" (Cary, IL United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Christmas Thief: A Novel (Hardcover)

I'm glad that I only checked this out from the library. Her stories have really seemed to lack substance recently and this is no exception. No suspense in this one. From reading the book jacket, most of her fans could have wrote this for her. These recent books are so watered down recently, they don't qualify to even be in the adult section of the store. Boring!