Moonlight Becomes You by Mary Higgins Clark

So this is the first Mary Higgins Clark book that I have read.  My first question is, where did the title come from?  I totally thought this was going to be a romance (actually not even sure where the book came from, just found it on my shelf).  But anyways, it's not a romance, it's a mystery.  And I found it average, it took me quite awhile to get into it.

Maggie has just been reunited with her beloved step-mother who went out of her life at an early age when her father and Nuala divorced.  Tragically, just as they were reuniting, Nuala is found dead on the eve of her dinner party.  As the sole heir to Nuala's estate, Maggie sticks behind in the town to tie up some loose ends, and visit some of Nuala's friends for her.  It's during this time that she begins to become suspicious about Nuala's murder and some of the things that are happening at a retirement home nearby.  But her snooping around could cause some issues as well as most people like to keep their secrets hidden.

Maggie's an ok character.  I found her a bit distant and while she's supposed to be that way, it resulted in me not really caring that much about her character.  In fact, it took me almost until the end of the book to really warm up to her, and even then I think it was the suspense more than actually liking her.  There's a revolving cast of men in her life as well and while they're easy to keep track of; they also aren't really that developed as character.  Especially Earl Bateman, a professor with an unusual hobby.  He just felt a bit unneeded.  And while the bad guy was unexpected I wish there would have been more clues leading up to showing who it was throughout the whole book.

This was definitely a mystery, and as said before while there were some clues, there wasn't enough that I really could make an educated guess on who the killer was until close to the end.  Maybe someone else caught something, but I like solving puzzles and this one just didn't lend itself to showing clues.  Otherwise the writing was descriptive and you could tell that Clark thought about her setting quite a bit, especially the details of the retirement home.  It sounded quite posh to me.  There wasn't really romance, Maggie has a few suitors that stop by to see her, despite her coldness to them, but as far as a fully developed romance, that's not something to expect, even with the title.  The pace is very slow in the beginning and it was hard to get into the book, especially with not really caring about what happened to Maggie, but about two thirds of the way in it started getting interesting and finally captured my attention.

An ok book, I can't say that I'll seek out any books by Clark, but if more magically appear on my bookshelf like this one did, I'll probably read it.

Moonlight Becomes You
Copyright 1996
255 pages