Scan barcode
A review by deeclancy
As Time Goes By by Mary Higgins Clark
2.0
Reading this book was one of my attempts at trying out crime writers at random that I haven't read before. I know that the author is a very well-known name in the genre, but I wasn't really wild about this book. Admittedly, I obviously haven't read any other books in the series about amateur sleuth Alvira and her husband, Willy. But it has an air of young adult fiction about it, in the way in which the loose ends are very neatly tied up. There's a very definite happy-ever-after for the good eggs and an equally long spell in prison for the bad eggs in the book that you really only get in fiction aimed at youth. Added to this, we pretty much know the identities of the goodies/baddies fairly early on in the book.
We know who Delaney's birth mother is likely to be within the first few chapters, really, so there's no suspense around that aspect of things (Delaney is a young investigative journalist and news anchor featured in the book).
I mean, we all like things to turn out well for the decent people in stories, but any accounts I have read of adopted people finding their biological relatives are usually a tad more emotionally complicated than portrayed in this book. And though written in recent years, neither the birth mother nor the daughter she adopted out think about going on one of the DNA websites to trace their relatives, which is what many people do these days. As both parties are described as harbouring a profound longing in this regard, it's hardly plausible that they wouldn't explore this avenue in the 27 years that they have been separated.
This is an old-fashioned book and it has its charms, but I wouldn't regard it as being particularly nuanced crime fiction.
We know who Delaney's birth mother is likely to be within the first few chapters, really, so there's no suspense around that aspect of things (Delaney is a young investigative journalist and news anchor featured in the book).
I mean, we all like things to turn out well for the decent people in stories, but any accounts I have read of adopted people finding their biological relatives are usually a tad more emotionally complicated than portrayed in this book. And though written in recent years, neither the birth mother nor the daughter she adopted out think about going on one of the DNA websites to trace their relatives, which is what many people do these days. As both parties are described as harbouring a profound longing in this regard, it's hardly plausible that they wouldn't explore this avenue in the 27 years that they have been separated.
This is an old-fashioned book and it has its charms, but I wouldn't regard it as being particularly nuanced crime fiction.