MOTHER'S DAY

Not much of a Mother's Day for Karen Newhall: her adoptive daughter Jenny's birth mother, Linda Emery, turns up unannounced on her suburban Massachusetts doorstep and, two days later, just as rebellious Jenny's been cooing over Linda and making plans to visit her back in Chicago, Karen gets herself bumped off, leaving her husband Greg as the obvious suspect. Greg's reaction to all this- -running away from the arresting officers—seems like the final blow, but there are plenty of other suspects, from Linda's inhospitable brother to a Peeping Tom night clerk at the motel she never checked out of. McDonald (No Way Home, etc.) lays on the terrified (but plucky) heroines, abusive men, weirdly disjointed subplots, and incredible secrets from the past in a mix calculated to appeal to the more ravenous (and less discriminating) fans of Mary Higgins Clark.