Lights Out Tonight

Author: Mary Jane Clark

Rating: 4 Book Worms

My Opinion:

Sometimes when we make a mistake it turns out much better than we could possibly expect. That's just what happened with this book for me. I was at the library looking for a Mary Higgins Clark book that I had not read. The mystery section in our library has some pretty high shelves especially if you are vertically challenged. I saw Mary and Clark so I quickly picked up this book. Somehow I got home and realized that I did not have the book I thought I had. I saved it until I had read all the other books I had borrowed. Finally this weekend I picked it up and started to read.

Oh my gosh! What a great book! I love the quick paced story and I like the way Ms. Clark breakes the story down into short fast paced chapters. It was the perfect "take along" book. I could read a chapter very quickly on a break, while wating at some of the incredibly long stop lights around town (seriously, we have some really looooong stop lights). The best thing about this book is I was surprised by the outcome. Usually I can figure out who done it pretty fast however not so in this book.

The story takes place at a New England Summer Theater that is producing a play that has all the ear marks of being a huge hit. The director hopes to make the leap to Broadway then to the Big Screen. He has a big name actress in Belinda Winthrop who guarantees instant success to any project associated with her name but she is not interested in doing the movie. She performs opening night with out flaw and to great reviews.

The New York movie and theater critic who is reviewing the play happens to be the second wife of a famous director who's adult daughter is working as Belinda's assistant at the theater. Meg struggles to find her place in the world. She turns to smoking pot to help her deal with the step mother who married her father about a year after her mother died. Try as she might Caroline cannot break through the wall of hostility Meg has erected around herself. Throw in an ex-con who is running a drug cartel out of a hidden cave on Belinda's country estate, a strange resident artist who is obsessed with Belinda, and Caroline's husband who for some reason doesn't really want to discuss his past connection to Belinda and you have no lack of suspects when Belinda turns up missing.

The unknown killer narrates part of the story giving this a rather creepy feel. The book starts out with two young adults who are killed because they took a photo with their telephone and the killer didn't like that so he forced their car off the road. Both young people died. Not long after that the town librarian is killed when she catches our killer tearing out an article from a magazine that was written about Belinda. To top all this off, Belinda comes up missing and we think dead. This is where the story begins to twist and turn rather quickly.

When the killer's identity was finally revealed I was totatly surprised. This story had many "Hitchock" like qualities. Nothing was as it seemed and right was wrong and wrong turned out to be right. This was a very fun book to read.

Buy it or Borrow It: It is really a toss up for me. I enjoyed this book very much but I don't know if I would read it over again because knowing who the killer is would ruin the story for me personally. I think I'll need to try some of her other books and we'll see if I decide to collect them.