In “The Second Time Around,” we meet Carley DeCarlo, a journalist who writes financial advice columns. Her baby died ten years ago from a heart defect, and her husband couldn’t take the stress and left. Now alone and supporting herself, Carley feels like she’s put her life back together, but she hesitates to trust again.
Her mother has remarried, and her step-father’s daughter, Lynn, is cool and distant. Lynn’s husband, Nicholas Spencer, is everything Lynn is not. He’s charming, warm, and personable. He owns a company called Gen-stone which is devoted to seeking out a cure for cancer. He believes he’s on the track of a vaccination which could change the face of the future. His own mother died of cancer when he was a boy, and he’s passionate about saving others from the same fate. He tells Carley that if this vaccine proves successful, it will lead to other breakthroughs, including the healing of birth defects. Carley decides to invest twenty-five thousand dollars in Gen-stone as a memorial to her baby who died.
Three weeks ago, Nicholas Spencer went missing, taking all the money from Gen-stone with him. The investors are livid, Carley included. The remaining Gen-stone employees try to do damage control, but the anger is too great. The Spencer mansion is torched by an arsonist, with Lynn inside. She gets out, just barely.
Lynn calls Carley, hoping Carley will help her find out the truth. She doesn’t believe her husband could fraud so many people, and she believes he’s dead, and not in hiding, like his detractors claim. Carley agrees to help Lynn out, not realizing that her own life would be in danger before long.
I enjoyed this book by Mary Higgins Clark, but then, I always do. She blends characterization with plot and suspense in a tasty mix and serves it up with a side salad for her reader’s enjoyment.
(This book was published in 2003 by Simon and Schuster.)
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