You Don’t Own Me

You Don’t Own Me is one of the late entries in Mary Higgins Clark’s Under Suspicion series, co written with Alafair Burke and published in 2018. The Under Suspicion series follows Laurie Moran, a New York television producer who hosts a special investigations program that takes on cold cases in which someone close to the victim has fallen under suspicion but never been formally charged. Each book in the series centers on a new case, with Laurie’s team revisiting an old investigation while complications develop in her own personal life around the production.

In this entry, the case involves the murder of a successful pediatrician named Dr. Martin Bell, killed five years earlier under circumstances that pointed toward his beautiful young wife Kendra Bell. Kendra was never charged, and the years since the murder have been spent in the kind of social purgatory that public suspicion produces for those who never face the legal vindication or condemnation that a formal trial would have provided. Laurie’s program is going to revisit the case on camera, bringing the original suspects and witnesses back together to take a fresh look at what actually happened to Dr. Bell.

The production turns out to be considerably more dangerous than anyone had expected. As Laurie and her team dig into the case, the various people who had been peripheral to the original investigation begin to reveal their own complicated relationships to Dr. Bell and to the wider situation that produced his death. The investigation pulls in territory that connects to wealthy New York families, to the medical profession, and to the particular pressures of high end pediatric medicine that the Bell practice had been involved in.

The Mary Higgins Clark and Alafair Burke partnership produced several Under Suspicion novels across the late 2010s, with Burke handling much of the actual prose and Clark providing the structural ideas and the brand identity. The collaboration worked because Burke is an accomplished thriller writer in her own right, with her own legal procedural background, and the books deliver the kind of carefully plotted suspense that Clark’s audience expected with the polish of an active working writer.

The Under Suspicion series gives Clark and Burke room to handle multiple cases through the same recurring cast, and the television production framing lets them keep the procedural elements interesting without having to invent new investigators in every book. Laurie’s continuing personal storylines, including her relationship with her son and her father and the various other ongoing plots, provide the recurring emotional content that gives each entry its particular character beyond just the central mystery.

For longtime Mary Higgins Clark fans, You Don’t Own Me is a satisfying late entry. For new readers, the series can be picked up at any point.