The Lost Years, Mary Higgins Clark
The Lost Years, Mary Higgins Clark
6 Rating(s)
List: $24.99 | Sale: $17.50
Club: $12.49

The Lost Years

Author: Mary Higgins Clark

Narrator: Jan Maxwell

Unabridged: 8 hr 7 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 04/03/2012


Synopsis

Now in mass market, the latest suspense from #1 New York Times bestselling author and Queen of Suspense Mary Higgins Clark, where a biblical scholar is found murdered shortly after discovering the most revered and holy document in human history, which has now gone missing...

Dr. Jonathan Lyons, a seventy-year-old biblical scholar, believes he has found the rarest of parchments—a letter that may have been written by Jesus Christ. Stolen from the Vatican library in the fifteenth century, it was assumed to be lost forever. Under the promise of secrecy, Jonathan attempts to confirm his findings with several other biblical experts. But on the eve before his own murder, he confides to Father Aiden O’Brien, a family friend, that one of those whom he trusted most is determined to keep it from being returned to the Vatican.

The next evening Jonathan Lyons is found shot to death in his New Jersey home. His daughter, twenty-seven year old Mariah, finds her father’s body sprawled over his desk in his study, a fatal bullet wound in the back of his neck, and her mother, Kathleen, an Alzheimer’s victim, hiding in the study closet, incoherent and clutching the murder weapon. The police suspect that Kathleen, who in her lucid moments knows that Jonathan was involved with a much younger woman Lily Stewart, has committed the murder.

But Mariah believes that the key to her father’s death is tied to another question: Where is the missing parchment? Whom, among his close circle of friends, might he have consulted? And did one of them kill to keep possession of the letter?

With all the elements that have made her a worldwide bestseller, Mary Higgins Clark’s The Lost Years is at once a breathless murder mystery and a hunt for what may be the most precious religious and archaeological treasure of all time.

About Mary Higgins Clark

Suspense author, Mary Higgins Clark has had 51 novels that have been bestsellers in the United States and many other countries, all of which remain in print through 2015. It was through necessity that her career blossomed, but she had always had writing talent and aspirations.

Clark followed a dream in her early career and took time out to be a(at that time) stewardess for PanAm so she could see the world. Just before beginning her exciting new job.....being paid $5 less per week than her secretarial job.......she met William Clark who was so smitten with her that he proposed that she stay in the job for one year, then marry him at the end of that year. And they did just that. The Clarks had five children, and sadly her husband passed away from an extended bout of heart problems in 1964. Also, very sadly, his mother was at his bedside when he died, and she too passed away that very same night.

So, as stated before, out of necessity, Higgins Clark seriously launched her career of writing 51suspense novels with some being adapted to film. She is known as the "Queen of Suspense", she has the ability to serve as a master plotter to slowly create tension for the reader, while giving the appearance that everyone is guilty. Her books feature strong, independent women characters who are the heroines, who are noted for making sensible decisions. Readers tend to identify with these characters as more ordinary people than most novel heroines. Higgins Carter's novels are for adult readers, but because she does not include explicit sex or violence in them, they are also popular with children as young as twelve. Simon & Schuster have published all of Higgins Clark's novels, signed her to a $64 million , four book contract in 1990, and have funded the Mary Higgins Clark Award given to new authors of suspense novels.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Tennaners on May 21, 2012

Mary Higgins Clark is reliable, if nothing else, for serving up bland murder mysteries for the Matlock set. I didn't go into this thinking "hard-hitting think piece" so much as "of the Golden Girls, I really wish Dorothy would've been the last one. Love me some Maude." Her books aren't terrible, how......more

Goodreads review by Suzzie on March 31, 2019

The Lost Years was a quick, okay read. I actually only warmed up to a few of the characters, and even the murder victim was not completely easy to sympathize. Mariah was not bad by any ways but did sometimes come off immature. This one was pretty predictable but honestly it was the characters that j......more

Goodreads review by Anushka on May 17, 2013

Let me make this clear: I love Mary Higgins Clark. I've read plenty of her books and never given any of it below 3-star rating but giving 2 stars to this one feels too generous. First, this book started off with a Da Vinci Code type of plot which was not needed at all. Instead of that letter writ......more

Goodreads review by Laurie on October 25, 2019

I admit that I am quite biased where Mary Higgins Clark is involved. From the time my mother, grandmother and I began reading her books, I fell in love with her mesmerizing storytelling and the endless ideas she comes up with. The Lost Years tells the tale of Mariah Lyons, whose father, Jonathan, is......more

Goodreads review by MissSusie on May 15, 2012

As usually Mary Higgins Clark keeps you guessing, she really is the queen of suspense. From the description I was afraid it would be different than her usual works (or too Dan Brown-y) but it wasn’t it was another great mystery/suspense and with the bonus of Alvirah who was not even mentioned in the......more