Mary Higgins Clark has long occupied a distinctive place in popular fiction.
However. I feel her being crowned the “Queen of Suspense” is overdoing it, for
me she is no higher than a dutchess. She writes thrillers that are brisk,
efficient, and pitched to the broadest possible audience but with an Agatha
Christie light type of plot.
You Belong to Me, first
published in 1998, is a cleverly conceived tale of obsession and menace,
written in the plain, accessible way that has become her hallmark.
At the centre stands Dr. Susan Chandler, a clinical psychologist and radio
show host whose curiosity is raised after one of her call in shows draws her
into a years old mystery. Susan is likable, intelligent, and resourceful, the
sort of heroine Clark has fashioned many times before. Yet she is not richly
drawn. Her independence, her professional credibility, even her cautiousness in
personal relationships are sketched out but with little to no colour. She
serves the function of a guide through the puzzle rather than a fully realised
character in her own right.
The novel turns on the disappearance of Regina
Clausen, a wealthy and accomplished woman who vanished after a cruise years
before the novel begins. Her absence is not treated as a mere plot device but
as a haunting presence that gives the story its emotional weight. Regina
emerges, in recollection, as independent and worldly, her glamour serving only
to sharpen the shock of her disappearance. Her mother, Martha Clausen, carries
the novel’s most poignant note: a woman whose grief is palpable and whose
refusal to let her daughter’s memory fade anchors the narrative in human cost.
This points to the novel’s principal strength
and weakness. Clark writes with clarity with her short, dialogue-driven
chapters turn the pages almost by themselves, and she has an instinct for
planting red herrings in just the right places. However, what I find is that what
makes her novels so readable also robs them of atmosphere and depth. Suspense
is manufactured by rhythm and structure rather than by psychological
complexity. Characters often feel like archetypes—the earnest heroine, the
tragic victim, the grieving mother—mobilised to keep the machinery of the plot
running.
Even so, the novel succeeds on its own terms.
The central conceit—that women can be stalked, charmed, and destroyed by a man
who insists “You belong to me”—is
chilling in its plausibility. Clark has always known how to exploit ordinary
fears, and here she taps into anxieties about intimacy, trust, and the hidden
dangers of seemingly safe encounters. It is not a book that lingers in the
imagination, but while one is reading it, the pull is undeniable.
Verdict:
You Belong to Me is classic
Mary Higgins Clark: deftly constructed, compulsively readable, and emotionally
effective in moments, though never more than the sum of its parts. It confirms
her gift for popular storytelling, even as it reminds us of the limits of her
art.
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