Mystery Novelist Daughter of Mary Higgins Clark Dead at 66

Carol Higgins Clark didn't originally plan to follow in her mother's footsteps
By Evann Gastaldo,  Newser Staff
Posted Jun 19, 2023 1:30 AM CDT
Mystery Novelist Daughter of Mary Higgins Clark Dead at 66
Author Mary Higgins Clark, left, is inducted into the NJ Hall of Fame by her daughter, New York Times writer Carol Higgins Clark, during the induction ceremony at New Jersey Performing Arts Center in Newark, NJ, Sunday, June 5, 2011.   (AP Photo/Rich Schultz)

Carol Higgins Clark, daughter of iconic suspense novelist Mary Higgins Clark and an accomplished mystery author in her own right, has died at age 66. Higgins Clark, who initially dreamed of being an actress before her career path took a detour to follow her mother's, had appendix cancer and passed away on June 12, her family says. Higgins Clark was home from college for the summer in 1975 when her mother's career as a suspense novelist was just getting started, and she helped her mother out by retyping one of her book drafts, the New York Times reports. As she did so, she and her mom talked about characters and plot, and the younger Higgins Clark made dialogue and reference suggestions that she thought might ring more true with younger readers, the Washington Post reports.

"I did that for a number of her books, which was great for me to learn about how to write," Carol Higgins Clark once said. The two would later collaborate on holiday-season thrillers, in which one of Mary Higgins Clark's best-known characters, amateur detective Alvirah Meehan, sometimes crossed paths with her daughter's main recurring character, private eye Regan Reilly. In fact, it was due to Carol Higgins Clark that the character of Meehan endured: Her mother was originally going to kill her off, but her daughter objected and the character was saved. Carol Higgins Clark, who was raised in New Jersey and later lived in New York and California, wrote more than a dozen novels on her own and also ended up having that acting career, with multiple appearances in movies based on her mother's books. (Her mother died in 2020.)

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