Deck the Halls/The Christmas Thief: Two Holiday Novels

By Mary Higgins Clark and Carol Higgins Clark

Book Overview

From beloved storytellers Mary Higgins Clark, America's Queen of Suspense, and her daughter, bestselling author Carol Higgins Clark, two favorite suspense novels filled with holiday cheer.Deck the Halls(first published in 2000) was the mother-daughter duo's first collaborative effort, a brilliant story of high-stakes intrigue and detection played out against a holiday setting. Christmas is only three days away when Regan Reilly, the dynamic young sleuth featured in the novels of Carol Higgins Clark, accidentally meets Alvirah Meehan, Mary Higgins Clark's sharp-witted lottery winner turned amateur sleuth, at a New Jersey dentist's office. When a call comes through on Regan's cell phone notifying 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 gaining their release. Complicating the situation is the fact that Regan's mother, the famous mystery writer Nora Regan Reilly, has just been hospitalized with a broken leg, and a brutal winter storm is bearing down on them all. Regan must comfort her mother while trying to meet the harsh demands of her father's kidnappers, who are not just rank amateurs but also laughably inept -- making them all the more dangerous and unpredictable.InThe Christmas Thief(2004), Alvirah and Regan team up again to investigate another kind of kidnapping. When an eighty-foot blue spruce is chosen to spend the holidays as Rockefeller Center's famous Christmas tree, the folks who picked the tree have no idea that attached to one of its branches is a flask chock-full of priceless diamonds that Packy Noonan, a scam artist just released from prison, had hidden there over twelve years ago. When an excited Packy breaks his parole and heads to Stowe, Vermont, to reclaim his loot, he discovers that his special tree will be heading to New York City the next morning, so he and his bumbling crew have to act fast. Meanwhile Alvirah Meehan and Regan Reilly happen to be on a weekend trip to Stowe with their families when they learn that the tree -- and Alvirah's friend Opal, who won the lottery, but lost all her winnings in Packy's scam -- has gone missing.With two novels filled with twists and turns, intrigue and danger, as well as a hearty dose of good cheer, Mary Higgins Clark and Carol Higgins Clark offer stories that are as breathlessly suspenseful as they are heartwarming -- Christmas classics for many holiday seasons to come.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1439175675
• ISBN13: 9781439175675
• Release Date: November 2009
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Length: 414 Pages
• Weight: 1.25 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.2" x 6.4" x 8.3"

Customer Reviews

Two Holiday Suspense Novels in One Volume

Bestselling suspense novelist Mary Higgins Clark and her daughter and bestselling author Carol Higgins Clark joined together when they wrote Deck the Halls, first published in 2000. Their sleuths, Regan Reilly and Alvirah Meehan, team up again in the 2004 The Christmas Thief. Although both stories were enjoyable, I especially liked the first novel, Deck the Halls. The writing was crisp and the storyline taut. While the underlying humor was interesting, the plot centered on how the inept kidnappers were going to pull everything together and whether the victims were going to be rescued in time to spend Christmas with their families. Although the ending was a given, the ride throughout was fantastic fun. With The Christmas Thief, the criminals were just as inept, but the storyline just wasn't as interesting or mysterious for me. The authors spent too much time on the suspects and not enough on the main characters, whose lives prove to be much more interesting. Fans of the authors will enjoy that these two stories are now combined in one book and available to read as we head into the Christmas season. Deck the Halls/The Christmas Thief: Two Holiday Novels

entertaining lighthearted mysteries

Deck the Halls. California private detective Regan Reilley flies home to New Jersey to spend the holidays with her parents. Regan visits her mother, Nora a patient at the Manhattan Hospital for Special Surgery for a leg she broke tripping over a rug. At her mother's room, Regan also sees her father Luke, a funeral home owner, who quickly races off to attend the Goodloe funeral before going onto a dentist. However, Luke never makes his appointments as Petey the Painter and C.B. Dingle kidnap him for providing terrible financial advice. C.B. demands Nora send them one million dollars for the safe return of her spouse and his driver. Regan searches for her abducted father starting at the dentist's office where she meets local amateur detective Alvirah Meehan, who offers her help. The Christmas Thief. Con artist Packy Noonan talked people into investing over 100 million in his phony shipping company, but though his confederates escaped Packy went to jail. After serving twelve years he heads to Stowe, Vermont to get the diamonds that are hidden in an eighty foot blue spruce tree belonging to his former employees Lenny and Viddy. He doesn't know the tree is heading to Rockefeller Center. Others head to Stowe like Alviah Meshim and Megan Reilly with a convergence about to occur. These are reprints of entertaining lighthearted mystery collaborations of Mary Higgins Clark and Carol Higgins Clark. Each entry is fun as stars from the mother daughter authors' solo books team up for the holidays. Although the underlying premises for the action are stretches, no one will care these are enjoyable Christmas suspense thrillers. Harriet Klausner