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Critic's Corner
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Reviewed by: Patricia Ann Jones "When Ellie awoke that morning, it was with the sense that something terrible had happened. "Then Ellie remembered what was wrong: Andrea hadn't come home last night. After dinner, she had gone to her best friend Joan's house to study for a math test. She had promised to be home by nine o'clock . . ." Ellie Cavanaugh was only seven-years-old on the morning her 15-year-old sister Andrea was found murdered in the back of the Westerfield's garage. Ellie would remember that morning and the afternoon, as the defining day of her life. Guilt is a terrible burden for a little girl to carry through life. Guilt brought on because Ellie did not, until later, tell her parents that her sister had gone to the Westerfield garage to meet a boy. The boy, Rob Westerfield, who Daddy had forbid Andrea to date. Everyone said Rob was wild, but he was also handsome, rich, and intimidating. Ellie thought her sister was afraid of Rob, but yet Andrea wore the heart-shaped locket he'd given her, and she surely did leave Joan's early to meet Rob at the "hideout" in the back of his grandmother's garage. Three suspects emerged in the investigation of Andrea's brutal murder: Rob Westerfield, the 19-year-old scion of a prominent family, Paulie Stroebel, a 16-year-old schoolmate who had a crush on Andrea, and Will Nobels, a local handyman who often worked for the Westerfields. However, Rob was arrested and charged with first degree murder. During the trial, it was Ellie's tearful testimony that convinced the jury that Rob Westerfield was the killer. He was convicted and sentenced to prison. Andrea's death cut a path of grief so deep into Ellie's parent's marriage that they soon divorced. "Lieutenant Edward Cavanaugh, an officer of the New York State Police, hero of a dozen life-threatening situations, had not been able to prevent the murder of his beautiful, headstrong, 15-year-old daughter, and his agony could not be shared with a fellow mourner, however close by blood." After all, Andrea had been her "Daddy's Little Girl." Ellie and her heartbroken mother moved around the country like gypsies until Ellie grew up and went away to college. Her mother died leaving Ellie on her own. She had not seen her father in years. She knew he'd remarried and had a son who was by now about 17-years-old. Over the years Ellie came to understand that when grief is not shared, blame is passed around like a hot potato instead, thrust from one to the other, eventually sticking to the hands of the one least able to throw it away. In this case, that person was Ellie. Convinced that Rob Westerfield would kill again, Ellie had several times successfully protested the convicted man's parole. This year, after nearly 23 years in prison, even she might not convince the authorities to keep the man incarcerated. Ellie had used her journalism degree to become an investigative reporter for an Atlanta newspaper. Her boss, Pete Lawlor, was a kind man and understood Ellie's obsession with keeping Rob Westerfield off the streets to kill again. When Ellie asked for a leave of absence to return to Oldham-on-the-Hudson in Westchester County, New York, to try and persuade the parole board to retain Rob, Pete gave her permission. At this point in the story, Clark deepens not only her plot, but the characterizations of all the players. One by one Ellie meets old friends and makes new enemies. Each character is believable, each plot point creates suspense so great that the book becomes an obsession for the reader. It took me one day to read the 291 pages because I could not put the book down. Clark's descriptive passages are alive and so complete you feel you are walking the streets of Oldham, eating in the Inn with Ellie, and experiencing each fearful moment as she opens a mystery that sets your imagination on fire. "Daddy's Little Girl" is, in my opinion, the best Clark has written in two years. Her work seems somehow more solid, the plotting more deft. The middle of the book is as good as the first, and the ending so unexpected and harrowing I had to just sit back and allow the story with its players to run through my mind until I absorbed the depth of all I'd just read. After 21 best-selling suspense novels, you might think Clark could not improve upon her past works. You'd be wrong. Perhaps it is because this time out, she is working in first person, showing the story in her protagonist's point of view. Whatever the reason, ‘Daddy's Little Girl," is a superb suspense story Click Here to Order Daddy's Little Girl Jones is a published writer & literary critic. Copyright May 2002, Patricia A. Jones, all rights reserved.
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