I grew up on mysteries…the Boxcar Children and Nancy Drew stories. So it’s not a surprise that I still love a good mystery (as long as it’s slightly more complex than Henry, Jessie, Violet, and Benny’s tales). You Belong to Me by Marry Higgins Clark did not disappoint!
Susan Chandler is a lawyer turned psychologist who has a popular radio show. While hosting, she interviewed Dr. Donald Richards, another psychologist who wrote a book called Vanishing Women. It focused on missing person cases where women vanished into thin air and were never found and how women can protect themselves against this. Susan brings up a case not listed in the book but one that’s of interest to her: Regina Clausen, a news anchor who disappeared two years ago while on a cruise. After mentioning the disappearance, odd things start happening. A woman calls in to the radio show saying she was also approached by a man on a cruise with a ring identical to the one found in Regina’s stateroom after her death…then the mysterious woman disappears. Another woman calls into the show saying her ex-boyfriend bought a similar ring at a tourist show in Greenwich Village…then she’s murdered. Only Susan sees the connection between these women: the small turquoise ring with the inscription “You belong to me”. But with each new discovery, she’s putting herself in danger, and she doesn’t know who she can trust.
This book has really short chapters, which is a plus when you’re reading in short spurts between kid’s TV shows and water table playing, but it can sometimes get confusing who is narrating the story. It’s written in third person, but each chapter directs us to a different character’s situation. By the end of the book, we have over 20 narrators to keep track of! Sometimes I would get confused who was who and would have to go back to a previous chapter to clarify.
Another interesting aspect is the killer’s pattern, killing women based on the song lyrics from “You Belong to Me,” hence the inscribed rings. It was a nice connecting thread, much like how Agatha Christie’s book And Then There Were None killed people off by a nursery rhyme. When the song was brought up in the story, the characters only remembered snippets of it but never tried to Google it…then I remembered I’m a millennial who pretty much grew up with Internet access and this book is from 1998. Duh.
Overall, it was a well laid out mystery—I’ll admit, I totally fell for the red herrings—if you can keep track of who’s who.
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