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Killer Stalks Whodunit’s Even the best 20th high school re-union is something of a nightmare. But when a serial killer enters the scene targeting some of the popular girls from way back when, the gathering turns into something more: a Mary Higgins Clark whodunit. In Clark’s latest, "Nighttime Is My Time,’’ (Simon & Schuster. 370 Pages. $25.95) Jean Sheridan, a successful educator and author with a past, reluctantly returns to her hometown, Corn-wall-on-Hudson, N.Y., where Stonecroft Academy is located. Sheridan is being honored as a distinguished alumna and feels obligated to attend because another honoree, a former friend and classmate, was recently found dead in her California swimming pool. Sheridan suffered a harrowing child-hood in Cornwall, where her parents would stage public displays in the driveway on how not to conduct marriage. But she’s hopeful of reconnecting with something good from the past. She also wants to track down whoever has been sending her threatening messages about the baby she gave up for adoption in Cornwall 19 years ago. Clark staffs her story with a predictable cast of characters. Other than Sheridan, there are the B-list actresses with financial and alcohol problems, the celebrity psychiatrist who draws on his own tortured past to help troubled teens, the playwright, the real estate mogul, the TV executive, the pesky high school newspaper reporter, and the tired police officer on the verge of retirement. Clark moves the story through its paces, with the expected mix of clues and diversions lumberingly placed throughout. The tension is light in most places and barely existent elsewhere. But what Clark does in "Nighttime Is My Time’’ is stick to the formula that has repeatedly landed her books on best seller lists. She has a decent main character surrounded by some thugs and misfortune. Then she moves that character from point A to point B with simplicity and enough mayhem to keep her devotees on board.
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