WRECKED: REVIEW AND GIVEAWAY

GIVEAWAY ENDED
WRECKED
BY CAROL HIGGINS CLARK

ABOUT THE BOOK:

Private Investigator Regan Reilly and her husband, Jack "no relation" Reilly, head of the NYPD Major Case Squad, are about to celebrate their first wedding anniversary. They are looking forward to a quiet romantic weekend out of town. Wouldn’t you know their choice of destination provides them with anything but!

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?

Regan and Jack’s search for clues to this mysterious woman’s identity makes for an anniversary weekend they’ll never forget!

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Carol Higgins Clark is the author of nine previous bestselling Regan Reilly mysteries. She is coauthor, along with her mother, Mary Higgins Clark, of a bestselling holiday mystery series. Also an actress, Carol Higgins Clark studied at the Beverly Hills Playhouse and has recorded several of her mother's works as well as her own novels. She received AudioFile's Earphones Award of Excellence for her reading of Jinxed. She lives in New York City.

Her website is www.carolhigginsclark.com.

MY REVIEW:

In WRECKED, Carol Higgins Clark once again gives readers a “curl up and read a good mystery” that is like reading about old friends with Regan Reilly heading up the group. When Regan wants to celebrate her first anniversary with her husband Jack, what could be more perfect than the empty family cottage on Cape Cod? As it turns out, just about anywhere would have been better if you were looking for peace, quiet, and a romantic getaway. Filled with colorful, intriguing characters that you might actually find annoying in the real world, WRECKED will grab your attention from the first chapter when a pair of gossipy neighborhood sisters and a handy man intrude on what was supposed to be the Reilly’s romantic weekend. At the end of Chapter One when Jack quietly mouths the word “Bermuda”, the only other place they considered spending this special time, you realize this couple is in for more than romance at Cape Cod! Needless to say it turns out to be a weekend to remember but not for the reasons Regan had originally planned for.

Now a mysterious missing neighbor, or possibly dead body, Adele Hopkins had rented one of the nearby houses but was rarely seen except to row a boat out in the ocean, or buy pillows at Pillow Talk, a local shop. The pillows are unusual as they all say GRUDGE ME, GRUDGE ME NOT. Early in the story when handyman Skip finds her body near the steps down to the sea and races to Reilly and Jack for help, Adele becomes the center of the mystery as her body is gone when they run down to help her. What follows is a mystifying mystery that is perfect to accompany the wild weekend weather described in the book. As the investigation goes on, one surprise after another grabs the reader’s attention and just when you think you know what or who is involved, something else happens to make you rethink your decision. This is a enjoyable book to read especially if you are fans of the Regan Reilly series and if not, you probably will be when you finish.

GIVEAWAY

THANKS TO CHRISTINA AND THE
NICE PEOPLE AT SIMON & SCHUSTER,
I HAVE ONE COPY OF THIS REALLY
GOOD MYSTERY TO GIVE AWAY



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