Just Finished Reading A Cry in the Night by Mary Higgins Clark

Mary Higgins Clark has written many bestselling suspense novels...for some reason I've only read one of them that I can remember, and that was a few years ago.  I recently had the opportunity to read one of her earlier books, A Cry in the Night, from 1982.  It's about a divorced woman with two daughters whose ex-husband keeps hitting on her for money and criticizing her life choices while reneging on his child support obligations.  She meets an emerging young artist while she is working for a Manhattan art gallery. They marry and move back to Minnesota, to his childhood small town on the edge of the woods there...unfortunately her ex has moved there as well and his continuing, unwelcome pursuit of her is starting gossip among the townsfolk.  As the months follow, she discovers disturbing aspects to her new husband's overly-controlling behavior toward her, his callousness about life, and his obsession with his long-dead mother that cause a rift between the two as she tries to show more self-determination in their relationship.  It all eventually leads to a frightening climax, previewed by the scene in the story's opening chapter.  I felt that for the escapist, suspenseful entertainment it provided, A Cry in the Night was a good, short novel, well written and unpretentious in its ambitions.  I like to read books like this from time to time and plan to check out other books by this prolific and skilled writer...