#Inspired50 Fast Facts
Book: Daddy’s Gone A Hunting by Mary Higgins Clark
Genre/Audience: Mystery, thriller, suspense novel; adult
Spoiler-free synopsis: Kate Connelly is the heiress of a struggling NYC museum. When the museum explodes and Kate is found in the rubble alongside a disgruntled former employee, investigators are immediately suspicious. The former employee is killed as a result of his injuries, and Kate is placed in a medically induced coma. In a race against seemingly inevitable criminal charges, Kate’s sister attempts to unveil the truth, while others simultaneously aim to keep dark secrets buried in the past.
Rating: 4/10
Worth the read?: I really can’t recommend it.
Whodunnit?! I must know!
I had never read anything by Mary Higgins Clark until Daddy’s Gone A Hunting, but I had heard of her before. And, based on the number of times I’ve encountered her books in Goodwill, she seems nearly as prolific as Danielle Steele. I expected about the same quality of writing—generally solid grammatically, formulaic, and therefore predictable, but easy to read. I didn’t expect literary genius, which is good, because I didn’t get it.
For instance, it’s generally accepted knowledge that people in medically induced comas are unable to consciously speak. After all, being unconscious is the entire point of a medically induced coma. But Clark doesn’t seem to care about that, because in Daddy’s Gone A Hunting, a major plot point revolves around “conscious” words spoken by an unconscious person. To me, this indicates that the book’s purpose is less about telling a story with knowing and is more about pandering to bored, easy-to-please readers.
my three thoughts
The book was a breeze to read, that’s for sure. It took me less than a day to read all 385 pages, and I was invested in both Kate’s recovery and solving the crime. That said, there were too many characters to keep straight. It was distracting and frustrating; even toward the end, I struggled to remember everyone. But, as a result of the wide array of characters, there are multiple crimes to solve and the reader is constantly asking themselves just how many bad guys there are. The answer, it seems, is pretty blah. (Warning: some spoilers ahead!)
thought one:
The whodunnit is obvious within the first hundred pages.
Without giving away the answer, let me outline just how the answer becomes obvious.
The novel describes a serious accident that occurred decades prior to the story and haunts Kate’s mind while she is comatose. She seems to relive a traumatic experience resulting from that accident, and the longer she is in the coma, the more clear the repressed memory becomes. But an observant reader can piece together the memory long before Kate finally does. After all, the reader is following more than five other characters who are also trying to keep their own secrets. Kate regaining the memory is ineffective at building suspense because it both narrows the suspect list too much and gives the reader too much knowledge of missing cast members.
As a result, I was able to solve the crime(s) less than halfway through the story. That said, there are enough loose ends beyond solving the mystery that I think made it worth continuing, although I probably could have used my imagination and come up with more clever resolutions anyway. Regardless, it was disappointing how Clark went about revealing the bad guy. She gives so much away that the list of suspects is narrowed down to a whopping…one. One person. That’s it.
thought two:
The writing style is absolutely dreadful.
If all of Clark’s books are written in the style of Daddy’s Gone A Hunting, then I am genuinely confused by how she has managed to have such a successful writing career.
The third-person omniscient narration used in this book is hardly passable. It relies heavily upon head-hopping from one character to the next and tends to read more like a limited narrator. I don’t mind head-hopping the way that some do, but I do mind this:
“I wonder how much that cleanup crew got done yesterday? he asked himself. If the insurance guys gave them the go-ahead, they must be satisfied they don’t have anything more to find. And that crew arriving means that the security that the cops and the firemen were providing is finished. I’m going to take a ride and see what’s going on over there before anyone shows up.”
– Chapter 59
Did you catch that? The narrator portrays a character’s thought in first person, not in quotes, and then slips into/remains in a first-person perspective. This was so prevalent during the book that several times I put it down and considered not finishing it, and it often went on like this for paragraphs at a time. The laziness astounded me. It isn’t that hard to write in third person!
The real whodunnit in Daddy’s Gone A Hunting is the editor who let a best-selling author become a best-selling author with such incredibly lazy narration! (Ooh, burn.) Seriously, I’ve been writing better than that since I was in middle school.
I’m just saying, but if your book is in third person, you should probably make sure it’s in third person. You know?!
thought three:
Women are not objects to be described by dress or bra sizes.
I have never met a person and thought to myself, “I met a new person today, and she wore an X-sized dress with an X-sized bra.” I’ve never heard another person describe someone this way. And if I ever do, I can assure you this much: they’ll regret that day with every ounce of their being.
Even though this doesn’t occur in real life, there seems to be a trend amongst thriller/mystery authors to use size as the primary descriptor for female characters, and this novel is no exception.
Perhaps if we were objectifying everybody I wouldn’t care so much. But the size descriptor is reserved solely for women. I have never read a book, story, or article that described a man by his pant or underwear size. I’d wager, too, that if I submitted a manuscript revealing a man wore only a size small in boxers that an editor would pretty quickly cut it. The same would be unlikely to happen if I revealed that my female protagonist wore a 36A bra. Size seems to matter only if we’re talking about the width of a woman’s waist or just how voluptuous her breasts are.
I am disturbed, angry, and appalled that female authors continue to objectify their female characters. We can talk about how tall a person is or even how their arms flap a little when they wave, but why must we continue to categorize women by the clothes they fit into? The answer, of course, is because we have yet to break ourselves from the belief that women exist to be sexual objects useful only to further male bloodlines.
But anyway, I digress.
concluding thoughts
In the course of writing this review, I talked myself out of my original rating of 5/10 and into a revised rating of 4/10. The problems with this book really outweigh the good, and I’m just not sure I could recommend it to others in good conscience.
What’s your favorite thriller/mystery novel? I want to hear about it! Also, don’t forget to use the hashtag #Inspired50 when posting about books you’re reading this year so we can follow along. 🙂
Nikki
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