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The melody lingers on / Mary Higgins Clark.

By: Material type: TextTextPublisher: London : Simon & Schuster UK Ltd, 2015Description: viii, 262 pages ; 24 cmContent type:
  • text
Media type:
  • unmediated
Carrier type:
  • volume
ISBN:
  • 147114853X (pbk.)
  • 9781471148538 (pbk.)
  • 9781471148521 (hbk.)
Subject(s): Genre/Form:
Contents:
When a beloved aunt agrees to help her teenaged niece with her college essays, she never imagines she'll open doors to her own past. The niece writes a highly autobiographical piece about the night her grandmother was murdered - a grisly crime long believed to be a burglary gone awry. The girl, who was a young child at the time, was sleeping in the nursery and writes that she saw her step-grandfather in the hallway. Her aunt is shocked. At the time, the man in question - her stepfather - had been dead for several years. Among the missing belongings from her mother's home was a precious music box, on which was engraved the number of a Swiss bank account containing millions. Convinced her stepfather faked his own death and returned to murder his wife and grab the money, the aunt is determined to uncover the truth and bring him to justice.
Summary: "Lane Harmon, assistant to a renowned interior designer, is used to meeting the rich and famous in their opulent homes. But when she is called to the Bennett house, she knows this job will be different. Parker Bennett has been missing for two years - since just before the discovery that billions of dollars had vanished from a fund he managed. The scandal has not died and a cloud of suspicion remains around his name. Did he commit suicide or was his disappearance staged? His wife is convinced Parker is innocent - and alive. But there are people after him who are determined to learn the truth at any cost. And the more Lane gets drawn into the Bennett's world of glamour and intrigue, the most she puts her life and those of her family in jeopardy...With the hair-raising skill that has made her a multi-million copy global phenomenon, Mary Higgins Clark combines a huge financial scandal and a breathtaking tale of deception and betrayal into one of her finest novels yet."--Back cover.
Fiction notes: Click to open in new window
Holdings
Item type Current library Collection Call number Copy number Status Date due Barcode Item holds
Fiction Davis (Central) Library Fiction Collection Fiction Collection CLA 1 Checked out 17/04/2024 T00592090
Total holds: 0

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

Lane Harmon, assistant to a renowned interior designer, is used to meeting the rich and famous in their opulent homes. But when she is called to the Bennett house, she knows this job will be different. Parker Bennett has been missing for two years - since just before the discovery that billions of dollars had vanished from a fund he managed. The scandal has not died and a cloud of suspicion remains around his name. Did he commit suicide or was his disappearance staged?

His wife is convinced Parker is innocent - and alive. But there are people after him who are determined to learn the truth at any cost. And the more Lane gets drawn into the Bennett's world of glamour and intrigue, the most she puts her life and those of her family in jeopardy...

With the hair-raising skill that has made her a multi-million copy global phenomenon, Mary Higgins Clark combines a huge financial scandal and a breathtaking tale of deception and betrayal into one of her finest novels yet.

When a beloved aunt agrees to help her teenaged niece with her college essays, she never imagines she'll open doors to her own past. The niece writes a highly autobiographical piece about the night her grandmother was murdered - a grisly crime long believed to be a burglary gone awry. The girl, who was a young child at the time, was sleeping in the nursery and writes that she saw her step-grandfather in the hallway. Her aunt is shocked. At the time, the man in question - her stepfather - had been dead for several years. Among the missing belongings from her mother's home was a precious music box, on which was engraved the number of a Swiss bank account containing millions. Convinced her stepfather faked his own death and returned to murder his wife and grab the money, the aunt is determined to uncover the truth and bring him to justice.

"Lane Harmon, assistant to a renowned interior designer, is used to meeting the rich and famous in their opulent homes. But when she is called to the Bennett house, she knows this job will be different. Parker Bennett has been missing for two years - since just before the discovery that billions of dollars had vanished from a fund he managed. The scandal has not died and a cloud of suspicion remains around his name. Did he commit suicide or was his disappearance staged? His wife is convinced Parker is innocent - and alive. But there are people after him who are determined to learn the truth at any cost. And the more Lane gets drawn into the Bennett's world of glamour and intrigue, the most she puts her life and those of her family in jeopardy...With the hair-raising skill that has made her a multi-million copy global phenomenon, Mary Higgins Clark combines a huge financial scandal and a breathtaking tale of deception and betrayal into one of her finest novels yet."--Back cover.

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Excerpt provided by Syndetics

The Melody Lingers On 1 Thirty-year-old Elaine Marsha Harmon walked briskly from her apartment on East Thirty-Second Street in Manhattan to her job as an assistant interior decorator fifteen blocks away in the Flatiron Building at Twenty-Third Street and Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. Her coat was warm but she had not worn gloves. There was a distinct chill this early November morning. She had twisted her long auburn hair and fastened it at the back of her head. Now only wisps of it blew around her face. Tall, like her father, and slender, like her mother, she had realized after graduating from college that the life of a teacher was not the way for her to go. Instead, she enrolled in the Fashion Institute of Technology and after receiving a degree had been hired by Glady Harper, the doyenne of interior decorating among the wealthy and the socially ambitious. Elaine always joked that she had been named after her paternal great-aunt, a childless widow who was considered extremely well-to-do. The problem was that Auntie Elaine Marsha, an animal lover, had left most of her money to various animal shelters and very little to her relatives. As Lane explained it, "Elaine is a very nice name and so is Marsha, but I never felt like Elaine Marsha." As a child she had unintentionally solved that problem by mispronouncing her name as "Lane," and it had stuck. For some reason she was thinking about that as she walked from Second Avenue to Fifth and then down to Twenty-Third Street. I feel good, she thought. I love being here, right now, at this moment, in this place. I love New York. I don't think I could ever live anyplace else. At least I wouldn't want to. But she probably would decide to move to the suburbs soon. Katie would start kindergarten next September, and the private schools in Manhattan were too pricey for her. That reflection brought a familiar stab of pain. Oh, Ken, she thought. If only you had lived. Pushing back the memory, she opened the door of the Flatiron Building and took the elevator to the fourth floor. Although it was only twenty of nine, Glady Harper was already there, as she had expected. The other employees, the receptionist and the bookkeeper, usually arrived by two minutes of nine. Glady did not forgive lateness. Lane stopped at the door of Glady's private office. "Hi, Glady." Glady looked up. As usual her steel-gray hair looked as though she had not taken the trouble to brush it. Her wiry figure was clothed in a black sweater and slacks. Lane knew that Glady had a closet full of exactly the same outfits and that her passion for color and texture and design was reserved exclusively for the interiors of homes and offices. Sixty years old, divorced for twenty years, she was called "Glady" by her friends and employees. One of her fabric suppliers had joked "glad-she's-not" would have been a more appropriate nickname, a remark that cost him a lucrative contract. Glady did not waste time on greeting her. "Come in, Lane," she said. "I want to talk something over with you." What did I do wrong? Lane asked herself as, following the command, she walked into the office and settled in one of the antique Windsor chairs in front of Glady's desk. "I've had a request from a new client, or maybe I should say an old client, and I'm not sure if I want to get involved." Lane raised her eyebrows. "Glady, you always say that if you sense a client is going to be difficult, the job isn't worth it." Not that you're not difficult, she added silently. The first thing Glady did when she took on a client was to go through the home with a cart and ruthlessly get rid of any object she considered to be junk. "This one is different," Glady said, troubled. "Ten years ago, I did the interior design on a mansion in Greenwich when Parker Bennett bought it." "Parker Bennett!" Lane thought of the headlines about the fund manager who had cheated his clients out of billions of dollars. He had disappeared from his sailboat just before the theft was discovered. It was believed he had committed suicide, even though his body had never been found. "Well, it's not quite him I'm talking about," Glady said. "The Bennetts' son, Eric, called me. The government has clawed back every penny it can from whatever Parker Bennett had. Now the house is being sold. What's left in there has no real value and they're going to let Bennett's wife, Anne, take out enough to furnish a condominium. Eric said his mother is absolutely indifferent to everything and he'd like me to do it for him." "Can he afford to pay you?" "He was very up-front. He said he had read that the biggest commission I ever received was from his father's 'spare no expense' instructions to me. He's asking me to do it gratis." "And will you?" "What would you do, Lane?" Lane hesitated, then decided not to be ambivalent. "I've seen pictures of that poor woman, Anne Bennett. She looks at least twenty years older than she did in the society columns before the fraud was discovered. If I were you, I'd do it." Harper pressed her lips together and looked up at the ceiling. It was a typical reaction when she was concentrating, whether it was over the exact shade of the fringe on a drapery or a decision like this. "I think you're right," she said. "And it certainly won't take too long to put together enough furniture for a condominium. I understand that it's in a town house development in Montclair, New Jersey. That's not that far from the George Washington Bridge, maybe forty minutes in all. At least there won't be too much travel time." She ripped off a page from the pad and pushed it across the desk to Lane. "Here is Eric Bennett's phone number. I gather some small investment adviser gave him a behind-the-scenes job. He had been doing very well at Morgan Stanley, but he resigned after they found out what Daddy Dearest had been up to. Make an appointment with him." Lane carried the page to her own office, sat behind her desk, and began to dial the number on it. A firm, modulated voice answered on the first ring. "Eric Bennett," he said. Excerpted from The Melody Lingers On by Mary Higgins Clark All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Publishers Weekly Review

MWA Grand Master Clark (I've Got You Under My Skin) offers no major surprises in this enjoyable novel of romantic suspense spun around a lyric from an Irving Berlin song. When hedge fund billionaire Parker Bennett disappears from his sailboat, he leaves behind a great many fleeced investors, as well as wife Anne Bennett and grown son Eric, who are both bereft and suspect. When Anne is forced to give up their Greenwich, Conn., mansion and move into a condominium in New Jersey, she hires Manhattan-based interior designer Glady Harper to decorate the condo. Glady introduces her assistant, Elaine "Lane" Harmon, to likable Anne and handsome Eric. Meanwhile, two FBI agents try to find the missing Parker and prove Eric's complicity in his father's crime. Lane begins to fall for Eric and believes in his innocence enough to refuse to help the FBI. Clark keeps readers wondering about Parker's intentions and Eric's involvement, and how much both may cost Lane, as her tale drifts to an end. (June) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Booklist Review

After cheating his clients out of billions of dollars in a Ponzi scheme, Parker Bennett disappears from his sailboat, and his body is never found. His wife, Anne, and son, Eric, are still under suspicion, but no one can prove their involvement in the crime. When Anne is forced to sell her mansion and its contents to pay restitution to Parker's victims, acerbic interior decorator Glady Harper, decorator to the wealthy, and her assistant, Lane Harmon, agree to help Anne decorate her new townhouse with what little money is left. However, the FBI thinks Parker is still alive and that Eric helped his father embezzle the money, and they are continuing their investigation. Meanwhile, Lane, believing Eric is innocent, becomes involved with him, driving a further wedge between her and her stepfather, who despises Eric. Fans will enjoy this quintessential Clark novel, with its fast pacing, sympathetic main character, soft-edged suspense, short chapters, multiple plotlines, many points of view, and inside look at the lives of the rich and famous.--O'Brien, Sue Copyright 2015 Booklist

Kirkus Book Review

A missing con artist proves the catalyst for intrigue, revenge, and romance in this latest novel by the prolific Clark.Thirty-year-old widow Elaine "Lane" Harmon works for Glady Harper, an upscale interior decorator. She soon finds herself working on an unusual jobit's a small townhouse purchased by Eric Bennett, son of Parker Bennett, a notorious Bernie Madoff-like figure, for his mother to live in. Parker disappeared in a sailing accident before his many victims or the federal government could exact their revenge. Now his wife, Anne, is downsizing from their expensive mansion and Glady and Lane are decorating the place. But when Lane meets Ericlong suspected to be his father's collaboratorsparks fly. Eric denies he had anything to do with defrauding thousands of investors out of billions of dollars, and he's hired a security firm to prove his innocence. Meanwhile, a man named Ranger, whose wife recently died without realizing her dream of moving to Florida after they were victimized by Parker, has decided that Eric and Anne don't deserve to live at all. And a man who calls himself Tony Russoan undercover FBI agenthas moved in next door to keep an eye on Anne. Gorgeous, smart Lane, the mother of sweet little Katie and herself the daughter of privilege and power, isn't a terribly sympathetic character; and it doesn't help that she's a love magnet. While the author tries to raise the stakes with lots of nefarious schemes in play at once, none of it works. Clark pioneered a certain type of thriller and did it better than anyone, but her later novelsas evidenced by this onehave shown signs of wear with weak characterization, stilted dialogue, and sluggish, unimaginative plotting. This novel only serves to remind readers of how good Clark can be and isn't this time around. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

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