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Summary and Reviews of All Through The Night by Mary Higgins Clark

All Through The Night by Mary Higgins Clark

All Through The Night

A Suspense Story

by Mary Higgins Clark
  • Critics' Consensus:
  • Readers' Rating:
  • First Published:
  • Oct 1, 1998, 173 pages
  • Paperback:
  • Oct 1999, 206 pages
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About This Book

Book Summary

Another Christmas season mystery that will keep readers turning the pages -- all through the night.

A desperate mother. Her missing child. A stolen chalice.

With Silent Night, Mary Higgins Clark, America's own Queen of Suspense, gave her readers their best Christmas present ever.

Now, with All Through the Night, she once again celebrates the Christmas season with a tale of suspense that will keep readers turning the pages -- all through the night.

At the center of the novel are two of Mary Higgins Clark's most beloved characters, Alvirah, the lottery winner turned amateur sleuth, and her husband, Willy, both of them caught up in a Christmas mystery that calls on all of Alvirah's deductive powers, as well as Willy's world-class common sense.

The story begins when a young unmarried woman leaves her newborn child on the rectory doorstep at a church on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. At the same moment, inside the church, a young man is stealing a treasured artifact, a chalice adorned with a single star-shaped diamond. Both the infant and the chalice disappear.

Seven years later, a few weeks before Christmas, Alvirah and Willy are busy helping Willy's sister Cordelia, a nun who runs a thrift shop that doubles as an after-school shelter for neighborhood kids, prepare for the upcoming Christmas pageant. The future of the shelter is threatened, however, when the city condemns the building for that use, and it is further jeopardized when a nearby brownstone to which the shelter was to be moved turns out to have been willed to a young couple who were tenants in the building. Alvirah refuses to believe that the will is genuine and sets out to prove that the couple are con artists. Soon she is involved in the mystery of the chalice and the child.

In All Through the Night, Mary Higgins Clark has fashioned a Christmas gift for all her readers.

Prologue

There were twenty-two days to go before Christmas, but Lenny was doing his Christmas shopping early this year. Secure in the knowledge that no one knew he was there, and standing so still and quiet that he hardly could hear himself breathe, he watched from the confessional as Monsignor Ferris went about the rounds of securing the church for the night. With a contemptuous smile, Lenny waited impatiently as the side doors were checked and the lights in the sanctuary extinguished. He shrank back when he saw the monsignor turn to walk down the side aisle, which meant that he would pass directly by the confessional. He cursed silently when a floorboard in the enclosure squeaked. Through a slit in the curtain he could see the clergyman stop and tilt his head, as if listening for another sound.

But then, as if satisfied, Monsignor Ferris resumed his journey to the back of the church. A moment later, the ...

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Reviews

Media Reviews

Booklist
Bestseller Clark has written another Christmas seasonal mystery, and like Silent Night (1995), it's a lighthearted suspense tale that her readers are sure to enjoy.

Kirkus Reviews
If the resulting tale doesn't provide the menace or suspense of Clark's full-length novels it does succeed, as the Epilogue tell us, in providing a "human-interest story'' that's "especially appropriate for the Christmas season.'' Pass the fruitcake.

Reader Reviews

Nikki Wilke

I think this is one of Mary higgins best books! I absolutly love reading them and I cherish the time I take to read them. All of you who are fans and have yet to read this book should really get ahold of it and read it in one sitting! So many twists ...   Read More
Angie Perrin

This was an excellent book with two storylines running simultaneously. It made me both laugh and cry.I sat and read it in one sitting, so eager was I to have the ending revealed to me. Wonderful!
Brittany

This was a great book. If you enjoy suspense you will love this book you never know what is going to happen this story has so many twists and turns youll never know what will happen in this book it will leave you on the edge of your seat through the ...   Read More
Sarah Long

I think this book was really good. It is one of my favorites. This book was always very suspenceful and wasn't a bit boring. I understood the plot and story perfectly and really got into it. If you like Mary Higgins Clark books, you should really ...   Read More

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