VICTIM

Elizabeth Davies’s life seems governed entirely by one rule: Things go from bad to worse. The husband who rescues her from an abusive father and a neglectful mother turns out to be a quarrelsome philanderer whose own father, small-town honcho Glen Husby, can’t hide his contempt for his daughter-in-law. As she’s on the point of asking for a divorce, Gil Husby is murdered. Liz’s own testimony, along with that of Suzie Tustman, the wife of Gil’s partner Jack, helps put away Rick March, the misfit she knew in high school, for the killing. But a year later, after Liz has beaten back the Husbys’ attempt to grab custody of her eight-year-old daughter, Jenny, he’s released on a technicality. Though Liz has moved to Los Angeles as Beth Davies, it’s child’s play for March to hop down from Pine Lake, where the local sheriff is examining the body of Suzie Tustman, to LA so that he can let himself into her apartment, dope out her habits, and follow her to the out-of-town house-sitting stint Los Angeles Times reporter Vince Norris has set up for her. Even before Jenny is snatched practically from under her mother’s eyes, Henderson (The Killing Game, 1989, etc.) has planted enough doubts of March’s guilt to make sharp-eyed readers watch every other man in Beth’s life—and the final scenes will keep their gaze darting back and forth faster than the crowd at the Wimbledon final.

A pleasingly efficient proletarian Mary Higgins Clark damsel-in-distress without the well-upholstered trimmings.