Its success, it thought the duty to its "Irish culture" and to its "lucky star". And to a regular practice of writing, in his residences in the Hamptons and New York. But roots and luck are not the only explanations for her undisputed success of Mary Higgins Clark, the pope of the pink water thriller who died on Friday at her home at the age of 92. 56 books, at the rate of one per year, and millions of copies translated and sold. But what was his recipe?
His life was first a Dickens novel
Mary's father left Ireland at the age of 21. It is a journey without return. When he died in 1937 at the end of the "Great Depression", the little New York native was 11 years old, two brothers, and realized the burden which then fell on her mother. As a young girl, although a graduate in philosophy, Mary trained as a secretary to help the family. She works in an office five days a week and on Saturdays in a department store, then becomes a flight attendant. She marries Warren Clark and, when she's not taking care of her household, already writes news that no one is tearing herself away. Widowed at 37, with five dependent children, she continued her work and writing, even going back to university. He had to wait until 1969 to publish his first book, and 1975 to find success, with "Le Maison du guet", the story of a disappearance of children in a family struck by secrecy.
A decor she knows on the fingertips
Throughout her writing life, Mary Higgins Clark chose New York, her hometown, New Jersey, where she had settled after the birth of her fifth child, or the Hamptons, for her intrigues. Her novels are full of little details about this city, these landscapes she knows by heart.
Start with what you know and instill doubt
In her memoirs, "Between yesterday and tomorrow", entitled "Kitchen privileges" in English, a reference to the small sign that her mother had hung on the door after the death of her husband, to rent a room, the novelist pays tribute to the 'one of his teachers who advised him to write "based on what we know and ask ourselves what if ...? "
She will keep this advice in mind for the writings of her novels where the reader, caught in the intrigue, is taken by scenarios with twists and turns.
Independent and pugnacious heroines
Neither Causette nor Cinderella. Mary Higgins Clark chooses strong heroines, working in banking, the media and making a good living, intelligent. Independent. "It is my trademark," she explained to France Inter last November. "My heroes are not marginal people, they are very good people whose life turns upside down: they do not look for trouble, take care of their affairs, but a bad event bursts into their life, which sharpens their intelligence and their faith. I am Catholic and I use this moral strength to help them solve their problems, ”she told Paris Match in November 2014.
Readers can identify with these characters who do not feel sorry for themselves, who do not need a knight in armor to come to the rescue, and who perform a good job, but realistic. And who, if they do not burden themselves with a man during the intrigue, meet love at the end of the Roman.
Anxiety but no blood
She had read all of Agatha Christie and said she was "more fascinated by crime stories than love stories". But his crime scenes, like the abuse his psychopathic serial killers could inflict on their victims, have always been suggested. "There can be suspense without the blood dripping and passion without entering the bedroom," she explained to the Parisian in September 2015.