Do You Promise Not to Tell? [Hardcover]

Mary Jane Clark (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: 1999

Mystery

Product Details

• Hardcover: 334 pages
• Publisher: Doubleday; First Large Print edition (1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0739405322
• ISBN-13: 978-0739405321
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.8 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,475,250 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Mary Jane Clark is the New York Times bestselling author of fourteen novels: 12 KEY News media thrillers and 2 Piper Donovan/Wedding Cake Mysteries. A former writer and producer at CBS News in New York City, Clark is the daughter of an FBI agent and mother of two. She lives in Florida and New Jersey.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A great whodunit, September 5, 2000

By 

K. Lininger (FOUNTAIN VALLEY, CA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Do You Promise Not to Tell? (Mass Market Paperback)

Mary Jane Clark has the gift to bring her characters to life. This is a story of a TV producer, Farrell Slater who is on her last leg of her career. Either she gets the story of a lifetime or she'll be at the unemployment line. She is sent on assignment to an auction house that is selling the famous Faberge egg "The Moon Egg'. The egg sells for a record 6 million dollars. Farrell soon discovers that the egg is a fake and she knows who has the real one. Soon people who are aware of this egg are dying. This could be the story Farrell needs to get her career back or it could be the story to end her life. I had fun trying to figure out who the "bad guy" was. Read this book and have fun with it.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Mary Jane's Second Outing -- Much Better !!, April 19, 2002

By 

Gerald M. Bull "Jerry Bull" (Fairview, TN United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Do You Promise Not to Tell? (Mass Market Paperback)

In her first novel, Mary Jane Clark gave us a fine plot with plenty of suspense til right near the end, some characters to like (albeit the leading lady was a bit "squeaky clean"), and a different venue from most mysteries -- the busy newsroom of a major broadcast studio. Our gripe was that there was too much clutter, from almost unnecessary sub-plots to discussions about diseases and so on, that distracted from our story. Yet, we wanted to move to this book (her second novel) and see if we might find some improvement.

Indeed, the elements we liked are back: an excellent plot, with another late reasonably surprising "whodunit" at the end; the broadcast news venue; and characters we could relate to -- not so squeaky clean this time! Our leading lady, Farrell Slater, whose producing job is on the line throughout (actually, "given notice" by her boss, Range Bullock, whose minor role was reprised from book 1) discovers a probable art fraud of a six-million-dollars-at-auction Faberge Egg leftover from Imperialist Russia. So in addition to a couple of attacks and murders to solve, the true whereabouts and story of the egg form an entertaining tale throughout.

I think Mary Jane is on to something; to us, this is clearly a better effort than her first, although maybe not quite the "Stunner!" claimed by none other than [the real] Dan Rather on the dust jacket. The distractions are gone except for one remaining peeve -- our 260 pages of story are divided into 139 chapters. Maybe our author, a TV Newswoman in real life, just can't get away from a sound byte mentality. Keep the good stuff, give us a little more time per scene, and we'll be looking for five stars in her ensuing work. Good reading!

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent!, September 3, 2000

By 

Simonetta Cavilli - See all my reviews

This review is from: Do You Promise Not to Tell? (Hardcover)

This is my first MJ Clark book and I can't wait to get my hands on more. Although this book has over 130 chapters (it is only about 250 pages), it makes it very easy to read and you look forward to the rest of the story instead of flicking through the pages to see when the chapter ends. I really enjoyed Farrell from KEY news as she embarks on a story involving the famous Faberge eggs that were commissioned by the Russian Czar, many years ago. Although, this is not really a 'great' crime novel (like John Sandford or Dennis Lehane) it has enough likeable (or not!) characters to keep you entertained throughout the whole story, similar to Janet Evanovich, without the humour.

If you are looking for a great, easy to read novel, that truly isn't boring or a chore, try this one, it is really worth it!