THE CRADLE WILL FALL

by Mary Higgins Clark ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 1, 1980

New Jersey's Katie De Maio just happens to be in the hospital (a minor car crash) and looking woozily out the window at just the moment when insane super-gynecologist Dr. Highley is putting the body of pregnant Vangie Lewis into the trunk of his car. Moreover, young widow Katie just happens to be an assistant county prosecutor and she just happens to be a new patient of Dr. Hingley's--scheduled for an operation to relieve her excessive menstrual bleeding. Those are just a few of the coincidences here because, even more than before, Clark (Where Are the Children?, A Stranger is Watching) abandons any connection with reality in order to create suspense; and she delivers it all in 81 tiny chapters of ladies'-magazine prose, heavy on exclamation points, awful dialogue (""Well, darling, I'm going to uproot that core of sadness in you""), fuzzy psychology (Dr. H. is a ludicrously unconvincing loony), and lazy narration (a character is described as ""a Carol Burnett type""). Still, for those susceptible, this moves along briskly and is far more inventive within the formula than the neanderthal A Stranger is Watching. Dr. Highley disguises Vangie's murder as a cyanide suicide and then embarks on a killing streak to remove all other threats to his mad but often-successful scheme (fetus transplants from aborting women to infertile ones). . . while incredibly slow Katie, unsure whether she really saw what she saw, is being slowly bled to death by the mad doc's medication. And it all ends in a trembly hospital basement showdown. A little Rear Window, a little Coma, a little sci-fi-gynecology--mindless but harmless, hard-working suspense for Clark's gothicky (and largely paperback-oriented) following.

Pub Date: May 1, 1980

ISBN: 0899684483

Page Count: -

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1980

Categories: FICTION