5 member(s) found this review helpful.
love this book ... awesome story my first book by her not my last.
2 member(s) found this review helpful.
Clark's clever use of a bit of New Jersey real estate code fits perfectly into her usual formula for minting bestsellers in a novel about past deadly secrets coming to haunt the present. At One Old Mill Lane, in Mendham, N.J., 10-year-old Liza Barton wakes to find her stepfather, Ted Cartwright, attacking her mother, Audrey. Liza grabs a gun in defense, but in the ensuing melee Audrey is killed and Ted is wounded. Dubbed "Little Lizzie Borden," Liza is taken away and almost convicted of murdering her mother and attempting to kill the lying, scheming Ted. Twenty-four years later, Liza, now known as Celia Foster Nolan, has just been presented with a surprise birthday present from her new husband, Alex: the house at One Old Mill Lane. Alex doesn't know Celia is really Liza, and he doesn't know the house's grim past—but thanks to a real estate code obligating agents to notify prospective buyers if a house could be considered "stigmatized property," he's about to find out about the latter at least. As Celia fights to keep her dark secret hidden, their real estate agent turns up dead. More folks are killed and Celia comes under suspicion. But in typical Clark style, most of the characters look a little guilty. Some readers will get annoyed by Celia's tendency to do things that reinforce the cops' suspicions, but Clark's steadfast fans will suspend all necessary disbelief and play along
2 member(s) found this review helpful.
From the back cover:
Ten-year-old Liza Barton shoots her mother while trying to protect her from her violent husband-Liza's stepfather. While the death is ruled accidental, the tabloids still compare Liza to the child murderess Lizzie Borden.
Liza's adoptive paretns change her name to Celia and try to erase all traces of her past. Widowed after a brief marriage in which she had a son, Jack, she remarries a young lawyer. Celia is happy until, on her birthday, he presents her with a gift-the house where she killed her mother. On moving in, they find the words LITTLE LIZZIE'S PLACE-BEWARE painted in red letters on teh lawn. When the real estate agent who sold the house to her husband is murdered, she becomes a suspect. As she struggles to prove her innocence, Celia and her little son are being stalked by the killer.
"Mary Higgins Clark [possesses an] awesome gift for storytelling... A cunning variation on the haunted-house theme." --The New York Times