The Christmas Thief - A Novel

Meet Sterling Brooks. His was not an exemplary life -- he was too self-absorbed to ever really think about anyone else or make a commitment to the woman he loved. On the other hand, he had endearing qualities. His actual misdeeds were few -- his were sins of omission, not commission.

It is a few days before Christmas. For forty-six years Sterling has lingered in the celestial waiting room outside the heavenly gates, awaiting summons by the Heavenly Council. Will he be deemed fit for entrance into heaven? At last the day comes and the council settles on a test for Sterling -- he will be sent back to earth and given an opportunity to prove his worthiness by helping someone else.

Sterling Brooks finds himself in Manhattan, at the skating rink in Rockefeller Center. Among the skaters is a heartbroken seven-year-old named Marissa, and as Sterling soon realizes, it is she he has been sent to help. Marissa's sadness comes from her separation from the father she adores, a talented young singer, and her sparkling grandmother, owner of a popular restaurant. Both have been forced into the Witness Protection Program because two mobsters, the Badgett brothers, have put a price on their heads to prevent their testifying against them in an arson case.

Sterling, able to move back and forth in time and place, masterminds a plan to eliminate the threat from the Badgett brothers and reunite Marissa with her loved ones.

Deck the Halls

Three days before Christmas, Regan Reilly, the dynamic young sleuth featured in the novels of Carol Higgins Clark, meets Alvirah Meehan, the famous lottery winner and amateur detective. When a call comes through on Regan's cell phone, telling her that her father and his driver, Rosita Gonzalez, are being held for $1,000,000 ransom, Alvirah insists that Regan allow her to lend a hand in trying to gain their release. While Regan may be a licensed private detective, based in Los Angeles, Alvirah has many valuable contacts among the ranks of New York's law enforcement community -- including the head of the NYPD Major Case Squad, Jack “no relation” Reilly.   

Further complicating the situation is the fact that Regan's mother, the popular and very successful mystery writer Nora Regan Reilly, was hospitalized only the day before with a badly broken leg.  Regan must comfort her while trying to meet the harsh demands of her father's kidnappers -- and their tough deadline.

The Christmas Thief

The folks who picked a beautiful eighty-foot blue spruce from Stowe, Vermont, to be Rockefeller Center’s famous Christmas tree don’t have a clue that Packy Noonan, a scam artist just released from prison, hid priceless diamonds in it more than twelve years ago. Anxious to retrieve his loot, Packy breaks parole and heads to Vermont.  When he learns that his special tree will be heading to New York City the next morning, he knows he has to act fast.

What Packy doesn’t know is that Alvirah Meehan, everyone’s favorite lottery winner turned amateur sleuth, and Regan Reilly, a savvy young private investigator, are visiting Stowe with their friend Opal, who lost all her lottery winnings in Packy’s scam. And just when they’re supposed to head home, they learn that the tree is missing . . . and that Opal has disappeared.

Dashing Through the Snow

In the picturesque village of Branscombe, New Hampshire, the townsfolk are all pitching in to prepare for the first (and many hope annual) Festival of Joy. The night before the festival begins, a group of employees at the local market learn that they have won $160 million in the lottery. One of their co-workers, Duncan, decided at the last minute, on the advice of a pair of crooks masquerading as financial advisers, not to play. Then he goes missing. A second winning lottery ticket was purchased in the next town, but the winner hasn't come forward. Could Duncan have secretly bought it?

In the picturesque village of Branscombe, New Hampshire, the townsfolk are all pitching in to prepare for the first (and many hope annual) Festival of Joy. The night before the festival begins, a group of employees at the local market learn that they have won $160 million in the lottery. One of their co-workers, Duncan, decided at the last minute, on the advice of a pair of crooks masquerading as financial advisers, not to play. Then he goes missing. A second winning lottery ticket was purchased in the next town, but the winner hasn't come forward. Could Duncan have secretly bought it?

The Clarks' endearing heroes -- Alvirah Meehan, the amateur sleuth, and private investigator Regan Reilly -- have arrived in Branscombe for the festival. They are just the people to find out what is amiss. As they dig beneath the surface, they find that life in Branscombe is not as tranquil as it appears. So much for an old-fashioned weekend in the country. This fast-paced holiday caper will keep you dashing through the pages!

Alvirah Meehan, the lottery winner turned amateur sleuth; her husband, Willy; recently hitched private detective Regan Reilly and her groom, Jack, head of the NYPD Major Case Squad; and Regan's parents, Nora and Luke, are guests on the Royal Mermaid's maiden voyage, the Santa Cruise. The cruise is Commodore Randolph Weed's gift to a select group of people who in the last year "made the world a better place." What he really wants is good publicity that will generate future bookings for his struggling new venture. He also plans to scatter his beloved mother's ashes at sea during this four-day odyssey in the Caribbean. What he doesn't know is that his ne'er-do-well nephew, Eric, has smuggled two escaping criminals on board.

Alvirah won the cruise at a charity auction and persuaded the Reillys to accompany her and Willy. Other passengers include members of the Oklahoma Readers and Writers group, who volunteer their time teaching people to read. The group is planning a mystery seminar dedicated to a Ghost of Honor, the late Left Hook Louie, a champion prizefighter turned bestselling author. There are also ten men on board who had donated their time playing Santa Claus during the holiday season as well as assorted other charitable folk, all planning on a restful post-Christmas vacation.

The hoped-for tranquility soon vanishes. A terrified mystery fan swears she has spotted the Ghost of Honor in the ship's chapel. Two Santa suits disappear from a locked supply room. A storm develops, and in the infirmary an attempt is made on the life of a seemingly feeble passenger. Back in Miami, a TV reporter is turning the cruise into a public-relations nightmare, thanks to her spies on the ship.

As the Royal Mermaid sails through troubled waters, Alvirah, Regan, and Jack are uncovering the clues that lead them to dangerous criminals who were not on the original guest list!

Filled with suspense and humor, Santa Cruise is a holiday mystery you won't want to miss. Join the Clarks as they bring this unpredictable voyage to a hair-raising and heartwarming conclusion and ring in the New Year.

Who has not read about—or experienced—with a sinking feeling the fear that someone else out there may be using your credit cards, accessing your bank account, even stealing your identity.

In I ll Walk Alone, Alexandra “Zan” Moreland, a gifted, beautiful interior designer on the threshold of a successful Manhattan career, is terrified to discover that somebody is not only using her credit cards and manipulating her financial accounts to bankrupt her and destroy her reputation, but may also be impersonating her in a scheme that may involve the much more brutal crimes of kidnapping and murder. Zan is already haunted by the disappearance of her own son, Matthew, kidnapped in broad daylight two years ago in Central Park—a tragedy that has left her torn between hope and despair.

Now, on what would be Matthew’s fifth birthday, photos surface that seem to show Zan kidnapping her own child, followed by a chain of events that suggests somebody—but who? Zan asks herself desperately, and why?—has stolen her identity.

Hounded by the press, under investigation by the police, attacked by both her angry ex-husband and a vindictive business rival, Zan, wracked by fear and pain and sustained only by her belief, which nobody else shares, that Matthew is still alive, sets out to discover who is behind this cruel hoax.

What she does not realize is that with every step she takes toward the truth, she is putting herself— and those she loves most—in mortal danger from the person who has ingeniously plotted out her destruction.

Even Zan’s supporters, who include Alvirah Meehan, the lottery winner and amateur detective, and Father Aiden O’Brien, who thinks that Zan may have confessed to him a secret he cannot reveal, believe she may have kidnapped little Matthew. Zan herself begins to doubt her own sanity, until, in the kind of fast-paced explosive ending that is Mary Higgins Clark’s trademark, the pieces of the puzzle fall into place with an unexpected and shocking revelation.

*

Ellie Cavanaugh was only seven years old when her fifteen-year-old sister, Andrea, was murdered near their home in Oldham-on-the-Hudson, a rural village in New York's Westchester County. There were three suspects: Rob Westerfield, nineteen-year-old scion of a wealthy, prominent family, whom Andrea has been secretly dating; Paul Stroebel, a sixteen-year-old schoolmate, who had a crush on Andrea; and Will Nebels, a local handyman in his forties.

It was Ellie who had led her parents to a hideout in which Andrea's body was found -- a secret hideaway in which she met her friends. And it was Ellie who was blamed by her parents for her sister's death for not telling them about this place the night Andrea was missing. It was also Ellie's testimony that led to the conviction of the man she was firmly convinced was the killer. Steadfastly denying his guilt, he spent the next twenty-two years in prison.

When he comes up for parole, Ellie, now an investigative reporter for an Atlanta newspaper, protests his release. Nonetheless, the convicted killer is set free and returns to Oldham. Determined to thwart his attempts to whitewash his reputation, Ellie also returns to Oldham, intent on creating a Website and writing a book that will conclusively prove his guilt. As she delves deeper into her research, however, she uncovers horrifying and heretofore unknown facts that shed new light on her sister's murder. With each discovery, she comes closer to a confrontation with a desperate killer.

Now Regan is in New York to attend a crime conference organized by her celebrity-author mother. A friend, Thomas Pilsner -- the frenetic president of the Settlers' Club on Gramercy Park -- calls Regan, desperately pleading for help. Thomas is distraught over the sudden suspicious deaths of two members of the Settlers' Club. The men had promised to donate a cache of valuable diamonds to save the Club. But now the diamonds are gone, the men are dead, and Thomas is a mess. He fears the police will suspect he is at the heart of both mysteries, and worse yet, he'll lose his job.

Enter Regan. Who better than the star of Decked, Snagged, Iced, and Twanged to solve the mystery of the missing diamonds and suspicious deaths? Who better to contend with the quirky characters around the Club, such as Lydia Sevatura, the self-styled "Princess of Love," who operates a dating service, and her butler, Maldwin Feckles, who has just opened the first school of butlering in New York City? And who better than Carol Higgins Clark, with her sparkling, canny prose, to keep the readers guessing to the end "who done it"?

Regan and Jack had considered going to Bermuda, but instead they decide to spend four days at his parents’ beautiful beachfront home on Cape Cod, a wonderful spot where they’d never been alone. During the summer the house overflowed with Jack’s family, bubbling with activity from morning until night. But to be up there for a weekend in April, just the two of them, sounded like a perfect escape.

Arriving at the Cape late at night, Regan and Jack are just in time to experience the beginning of a major storm. The next morning, Cape Cod Bay is quite a sight, churning with whitecaps. The wind is howling ferociously. Sheets of rain are pelting the house. Regan is looking forward to settling in the den with Jack and watching the storm.

However, the best laid plans . . .

In the bedroom, Regan opens the curtains to find Skip, the Reillys’ young caretaker, pressing his nose against the glass, supposedly checking for leaks. A moment later, Jack arrives home from the market, two gossipy older women who live up the street in tow. A branch crashed through their living room window, and they need a place to stay. When Regan thought things couldn’t get any worse, Skip comes running into the house, distraught that he’d just discovered Adele Hopkins, the woman renting the house next door, in a heap at the bottom of her staircase to the beach. Regan and Jack run back down with him, but huge waves are crashing on the shore. Hopkins is gone, presumably swept out to sea.

Who was Adele Hopkins? No one knows. The sixty-ish loner, who moved in five months ago, shunned her neighbors. Even her landlords, friends of the Reillys, have no idea how to locate her next of kin. Discovered in her dining room are stacks of apology cards she’d not yet sent and bags of decorative pillows that are embroidered with the saying grudge me, grudge me not.

Regan and Jack begin an investigation to help their friends track down Hopkins’s family. They start by interviewing two young women who own the shop where Adele had bought the pillows. Pippy and Ellen opened Pillow Talk after they both lost their jobs. When a newspaper article revealing the terrible way the women had been treated by their former employers was posted on the Internet, business took off, they started to become well-known, and the Pillow Talk website became a place for people who had had similar experiences to vent their feelings.

Pippy and Ellen just received an anonymous e-mail from someone who spews venom about her former rowing coach—Adele Hopkins. Could she be the same Adele Hopkins?

The date is Saturday, April 2. Five April brides discover their wedding dresses have been stolen. One of the brides is private investigator Regan Reilly. Her wedding is in seven days.

Regan Reilly and her fiancé, Jack "no relation" Reilly -- head of the NYPD Major Case Squad -- are getting married! Regan had the perfect dress made by two young designers on Manhattan's Lower East Side. Arriving at the bridal salon to pick up her gown, Regan discovers the shop has been broken into, the designers bound and gagged, and wedding dresses for four of the April brides (her dress included) are missing. A fifth dress is in shreds on the floor. Even though it's a week before her wedding, Regan gets on the case, and in the process she meets an unusual mix of brides and grooms-to-be, or -- perhaps "not-to-be."

Over at One Police Plaza, Regan's bridegroom, Jack, is trying to solve a perplexing series of bank robberies. The robber, nicknamed "The Drip" by the NYPD because he always strikes during rainstorms, has been eluding the police for months. Jack is determined to crack the case before his upcoming nuptials.

Carol Higgins Clark fuses the two seemingly unrelated mysteries with an ingenious twist, taking readers from the streets of New York City, to the casinos of Atlantic City, and finally to that most popular wedding spot -- the one and only Las Vegas. She weaves a web of mystery around a charming, humorous tale of five April brides and the trials and tribulations they face planning their weddings.