Moonlight Becomes You [Hardcover]

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

Book Description

Publication Date: May 1, 1996

A tale of brilliantly sustained terror from america's "queen of suspense"

Set in Newport, Rhode Island, Moonlight Becomes You has as its center Maggie Holloway, an independent young woman who has put personal tragedy behind her and become one of the fashion world's most successful photographers.

While accompanying her date to his family reunion, Maggie is reunited with a woman who had once been her stepmother. Nuala, now widowed, invites Maggie to visit her, but when Maggie arrives, she finds Nuala dead -- the victim of an apparently random break-in.

Maggie is stunned when she learns Nuala had changed her will, leaving her Victorian house to Maggie -- the only proviso that she occasionally visit her old friend Greta Shipley. When she accompanies Mrs. Shipley to the cemetery to visit Nuala's grave -- as well as those of other friends recently lost -- Maggie discovers that something is terribly wrong. Using her skills as a photographer to aid her in uncovering the secrets hidden on the gravesites, she realizes that these deaths may not have been random, but part of a diabolical scheme. What Maggie doesn't realize is that she too has become a target -- and each clue brings her closer to a shocking, unimaginable fate.

With the sense of swiftly mounting danger that has made all of Mary Higgins Clark's works major bestsellers, Moonlight Becomes You is enthralling suspense.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Newport, Rhode Island: a world of old money, old names, and sinister secrets. Maggie Holloway, a fashion photographer, goes to visit an old friend -- but when she arrives, the friend is dead, the victim of a violent robbery. Maggie is stunned when she learns that she's the beneficiary of the will -- and even more stunned when she recognizes a pattern of murder in Newport society that will lead the killer straight to her. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

Pretty photographer Maggie Holloway begins Clark's latest (after Silent Night) lying in a coffin buried in a grave, pulling desperately at a string that leads to a bell with no clapper. How she got there is the essence of a convoluted tale of a ritzy Newport, R.I., retirement home whose well-heeled residents seem to die with alarming frequency, leading to high-profit turnover of their apartments there. Latest to shed her mortal coil was Maggie's much-loved stepmother, a fact that led intrepid Maggie to take an unwise amount of interest in the deaths-and also to question why several of the graves seemed to have little funerary bells on them. As usual with Clark, there is a stalwart admirer whose love does not immediately speak its name, and a surfeit of suspicious characters, including a scholarly funeral nut, a shady investment broker, a venal lawyer, a drunken, inept doctor and a nosy nurse. There's some fun in the sprightly Newport oldsters, and the many scenes and characters are shifted around smoothly and with a practiced hand. The bells gimmick seems no more than that, however, and the book is light on thrills-though there's nothing to put off Clark's myriad fans. Major ad/promo; Literary Guild main selection; Reader's Digest Condensed Books selection; paperback rights to Pocket Books; author tour. (May).
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 332 pages
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster (May 1, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1580600611
• ISBN-13: 978-1580600613
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.7 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (95 customer reviews)

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

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Exciting but creepy !!!, November 8, 2002

By 

Beverley Strong (Australia) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Moonlight Becomes You (Mass Market Paperback)

What a fabulous, exciting and just-creepy-enough read this is.Maggie Holloway is a successful New York photographer who unexpectedly meets her former stepmother, Nuala after a gap of many years. Maggie agrees to visit Nuala in her Newport home for a short stay but upon her arrival, finds Nuala dead after a vicious beating.Maggie learns that Nuala changed her will in her favour only the day before and also changed her mind about selling her house and going to live in a luxurious retirement establishment.Nuala had left a request that Maggie visit her friend Greta who already lives in this retirement home and, when Greta dies unexpectedly that same evening, begins to feel that something is terribly wrong. Mary Higgins Clark incorporates some strange and slightly macabre touches with sinister props, a local weirdo and the feeling that Maggie should be looking over her shoulder--a lot !!!

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars What happened?, January 9, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Moonlight Becomes You (Mass Market Paperback)

This book was the most boring Mary Higgins Clark book I have ever read. I usually love her books and can't put them down, but I found myself struggling to finish this one. I mean, most of the story takes place in a NURSING HOME! Wooo, that's thrilling. I'm normally a huge fan of Clark's, but I have to say that this book disappointed me greatly. To anyone who's never read Clark's books before, I recommend "A Cry in the Night" or "Pretend You Don't See Her" and advise you to skip this one.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Moonlight Becomes You, March 18, 2006

By 

Tarrjeane "Tarr" (Spring Hill, Fl USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Moonlight Becomes You (Mass Market Paperback)

Moonlight Becomes You is full of high suspense, spooky highlights and romance. Just what you would expect from the Queen of Suspense.

This is one of Mary Higgins Clark's top thrillers I've read in a while, and I have read almost all of her books.

You will not be disappointed in the twist and turns in this book nor the outcome. In fact, the only time you will be disapointed is when you finish the book.