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(upbeat music) - Thanks for joining us here on Remember Them.

I'm here with my colleague, my co-anchor, Steve Adubato, and so excited for this next segment, Steve.

Well, two segments back to back, but both remembering a mother and daughter duo, Mary Higgins Clark, the famous author, Queen of Suspense as well as her daughter, Carol Higgins Clark, who was also an author later in life.

- Mary Higgins Clark, Queen of Suspense.

I mean, she created these psychological thriller suspense books before it came what it is today, like, it's a huge genre in today's society with the podcast all about true crime, the books, the TV shows, the movies.

And she was one of the first, not the first, but one of the first to really make it so interesting and what people wanted to gravitate towards, she created such a strong following and wrote 50 plus books later in life, not until she was in her late 40s did she really start publishing these novels.

- Sold millions?

Sold millions.

- Oh yeah, millions, millions.

And you know, it's just her work lives on in so many different ways.

Up next there’s Alafair Burke.

who co-wrote some of those books with her, a series called Under Suspicion.

So the two of them work together on that book collaboration.

And then on the back end of the show, I get to speak with Carol's niece and Mary's granddaughter, Elizabeth Higgins Clark, about the family, the family unit, and New Jersey being such an important location and place for the entire Clark family.

- Is the daughter, granddaughter a writer as well?

- She does write, but not books.

She writes for TV and movies.

- Check it out for Jacqui and the team all about remembering Mary Higgins Clark, Carol Higgins Clark.

Jacqui does, as usual, two great interviews.

Check it out.

(pleasant music) ♪ I'll ♪ - [Narrator] Mary Higgins Clark is one of the most beloved writers in the world.

In the U.S.

alone, she has sold more than 100 million books.

She is the number one fiction author in France and was chosen by Mystery Writers of America as Grand Master of the prestigious Edgar Awards.

But success did not come easily.

Born in the Bronx, she lost her father when only 11.

After high school, she went to secretarial school, but dreamed of becoming a writer.

At 22, she married Warren Clark and started writing short stories.

In 1956, they moved to New Jersey, and three months later, she sold her first story.

It had taken six years and 40 rejection slips.

Left a young widow with five children in 1964, Mary began writing an historical novel, which was published in 1969.

Her first suspense novel was published in 1975 and marked a turning point.

Not only did 40 bestselling books follow, five set in New Jersey, but so did a BA from Fordham and 18 honorary degrees.

- Welcome back to "Remember Them".

Joining us now, as we remember suspense author Mary Higgins Clark, is New York Times bestselling author, Alafair Burke.

Alafair, it's so great to have you with us.

- I'm really happy to be here.

Thank you.

- Well, you knew Mary Higgins Clark both professionally and personally on so many different levels, and we'll talk a little bit about that in just a moment.

But first, I wanna hear from you on what you know about Mary Higgins Clark, her upbringing and why it took her so long to publish her first novel.

I know writing was always a passion of hers, but there was a lot of family tragedy and family responsibilities that kind of stood in the way of that journey for her.

- Yeah.

My understanding of it is Mary married very young to somebody she met and they fell in love, and it was kind of a whirlwind romance.

And they had five children together, and then she was widowed at a remarkably young age.

And so then there she was on her own as a single, you know, mother left to raise five kids.

And she worked various jobs, and she put herself back into school 'cause she wanted her kids to know that she had an education, and she wanted them to see that for themselves, right?

To value that.

And then she had a passion for writing and she was writing short stories and she wrote a novel that was a historical fiction that didn't go anywhere.

And then she wrote "Where Are the Children?"

and that was the book that took off, and I think they sold the paperback rights for some enormous number.

And she talks about going to her night class at Fordham that night.

And she was just like writing all of the zeros in her notebook, dreaming about how her life was gonna change.

But, you know, she would wake up in the morning before the kids woke up and she would make them breakfast and she would write, you know, for hours while they were still sleeping.

So, you know, it shows that, you know, dedication is kind of the number one thing and then the rest of it has to fall in place too, but I think a lot of people find those kind of stories really motivational because then you can't really whine about not writing if somebody with five kids in the house that she's raising alone manages to do it.

- Let's talk about the genre of psychological suspense, these novels that she wrote.

She wasn't the first, but she was one of the best and had so many books that she wrote about suspense.

How was it that she helped shape what it is today?

Because we see so many podcasts and movies and TV shows and books and they always have this really strong following of supporters and readers.

- Yeah, I'm so glad that you said that because I think she doesn't necessarily get enough credit for the roots that she laid down that you can see in contemporary, kind of edgy psychological crime fiction because I think a lot of us, particularly my age, think of her books kind of nostalgically 'cause she was sort of the gateway drug into crime fiction.

And they were known for kind of being clean books.

There's no profanity, there's no, you know, graphic violence on the page, there's no like hot, steamy sex scenes, like, so they, you know, they were safe for kids and I started reading them when I was really young.

And so I think a lot of us think of her books as old fashioned in that sense.

But if you actually look at the story of, if you look at "Where Are the Children?"

for example, you have an unreliable narrator because of, you know, psychological hurdles and trauma that she's experienced that she's not fully aware of.

So that is tied to psychological suspense.

You also have a situation where the danger, instead of being outside of the house, like scary strangers trying to come into your safe space, like the danger's close to home, and that is directly related to domestic suspense, right?

It's kind of the predecessor to "Gone Girl" to some extent.

And then finally, a lot of her cases had their roots in true crime, like she liked to read, she and I both, like, liked to read the crime columns of the New York Post and, you know, eventually that turns into true crime message boards and we found a lot of, both of us in separate and together, would find the inspiration in true crime as well.

So, you know, there was a lot about her work that's actually really modern.

- Well, what if you asked her, and I'm wondering if you did ask her, what drove her to write about such scary things?

Especially as a mother, you know, I'm a mom.

Sometimes your mind wanders, you, you get scared about, you know, where you, just anything about your kids, anything bad that could happen to them.

She was a churchgoing lady and this is what she decided to write about.

Why?

- Yeah.

I mean, I think like a lot of people but I think women especially, like the world is such a scary place and can be so violent and through fiction, it almost gives you a sense of control over it.

And that's my answer, but my guess is she came from it to a similar place.

But I think the one thing that was very true to her work and her brand is that she took everyday normal people who, themselves, were just going about their business and living normal lives.

They were not putting themselves in danger, they don't have jobs that invite the danger in.

They're just regular normal people and trouble finds them, and then they saved themselves.

And I think that that was a recurring theme in her work.

- Well, let's talk about your relationship with Mary Higgins Clark.

How did you first get connected with her?

Because the two of you collaborated on the "Under Suspicion" series, many books together.

Talk about first getting connected with Mary Higgins Clark.

- Yeah, that was kind of the day I became the luckiest crime writer world.

(both laughing) You know, I, this is where, you know, a writer would say different points of view, like from my first person perspective, I don't quite know how I got on the mountain, but she had had a book called "I've Got You Under My Skin" where one of the characters was a journalist who worked on a true crime television show where they would recreate unsolved crimes and they would focus on the people who had lived under suspicion for years, but had never been tried, had never been convicted, and then try to, you know, reveal new things about the case.

So after that book was published, she and her editor saw the potential for a spinoff where that character, whose name is Laurie Moran, would be the main character with an ongoing series where each book, you know, would be a new unsolved crime case that they would revisit.

And the idea was to pair her with a collaborator who had experience writing procedurally-based ongoing series so that she could write that series with someone else, but also continue to do her own standalone novels.

- And that someone else was you.

- Somehow I got on the radar for that.

And I got a phone call from someone at the publisher that I knew, so I think instead of her cold calling me, they had someone from the publisher that's a good friend of mine reach out and just said, "Hey, you know, there's a collaboration inside and your name's on the list and, you know, do you, would you be interested?"

And I'm like, "I'm kind of doing my own thing," and I'm also a law professor on the side, that's another issue.

On the side.

(laughs) It's like I have two real jobs.

- Busy.

- I'm like, yeah, a busy, busy girl.

And I'm like, "I don't, I don't really need to collaborate.

That doesn't sound for me. "

And they're like, "Well, it's with Mary Higgins Clark."

And I was like, "Oh, okay.

Well, that is different because any crime writer my age, like, grew up, you know, it's ole fan girl."

So I was like, "Well, I'm not gonna say no to the potential for that."

So she invited me out to her house in New Jersey.

We had lunch and we kind of just talked about storytelling and she had said she had read several of my books and was a fan and of course at that point, like, I'm just trying not to, like, jump out of my seat and jump up and down like a child.

- You're like, "Whatever you want, I'm in."

(both laughing) "Whatever you want to do, I'm in," is what I'm guessing you said.

- So I had read, obviously I had read the, the origin book, I'd read "I've Got You Under My Skin" and I had a good sense of the characters and had some ideas about how to fill out the rest of the ensemble and how to turn it into an ongoing series.

And, you know, our ideas were just meshing really well.

And she, we were like, "So how do we do this?"

So I know like with some collaborators of the lead author, which would be her, gives a, you know, an outline that's almost paint by numbers, like chapter one, two, three, four, five.

I'm like, "So do you, like, are you gonna give me an outline or are we gonna outline it together?"

And she goes, "Oh, I don't outline.

I don't know how to outline a book."

And I'm like, "Yeah, I don't either."

(laughs) So it's like how do two authors who just wing it?

- So how did you, how did you collaborate?

What was that experience like collaborating with her?

- We just kind of said, "Okay, when we're not really winging it, what do we really do?"

And both of us, and I think this is when we both knew it was gonna work, is that we really start with character and go out from there and you kind of find plot through character.

And so we started talking, that's where the idea for the first book came from, for "The Cinderella Murder" is what it was called, and we started saying like, "What is the type of case that would mean a lot to Laurie personally?"

And so that, we kind of found the case that way and then we said, "Okay, how would a college student find herself in trouble?"

And we kind of came up with ideas of that.

And so we've kind of found a plot after talking for several hours, it was like a two-woman storyboarding room for a writer's room, the way they staff TV shows, basically.

And so we would come up with we'd call it like the Bible or whatever, like we'd have, it wasn't an outline, but it was a, a lengthy document that kind of explained who all the characters were, what their secrets were, what their motivations were, what's the big reveal, and then we would write it together.

And we did that for several books all the way up until she passed away in 2020.

- Well, fast forward to the time, the end of her life and what you were working on then and just how important it was for you to finish out what you all had started together.

- Yeah.

We were almost done with an "Under Suspicion" novel and we were passing pages back and forth and it was the very end of 2019.

No, it was, it was, yeah, it was into the holidays.

And then I think we were still passing pages together two days before she passed away.

So it was very clear she wanted me to finish the novel and her family wanted me to finish that novel, and it was my honor to do that.

And then we had plans for the end of the series or, you know, we knew something that was gonna happen in the series that hadn't happened yet and the family wanted me to go ahead and write that book.

And then we also had wanted to do a sequel to "Where Are the Children?"

called "Where Are the Children Now?"

So that is one of the great privileges of my lifetime was to be able to kind of see that through.

- And finally, Alafair, what do you think we should remember most about Mary Higgins Clark?

- I mean, she's just an incredibly kind and remarkable person in addition to her talents and her influences as a writer and as a storyteller, she's one of those people, even though at the height of her success, I mean, she always, and so many crime writers will tell you this, that when you talk to her, she made you feel like the most important person.

She wasn't always looking around the room to see who else she should be talking to.

And I think for her readers who were ever lucky enough to meet her, she put, she knew exactly what her readers expected from her and she always wanted to deliver for them.

She would stay at a reading long after all the books had sold out and stay and just talk to people about how they would read her books with their mother or were passing it on to their daughters and take pictures and just a very kind and generous person.

And then also just as the matriarch of a really solid family, like I got to know some of the other people in Mary's family pretty well and just the, seeing their closeness and the way she has, she was kind of, you know, providing the glue for this wonderfully, you know, kind, generous family.

So, nd then of course, as a storyteller, her impact is lasting.

- We're gonna learn more about that family unit up next with her granddaughter, Elizabeth.

Thank you so much, Alafair.

This was so insightful to help us learn more about the late great Mary Higgins Clark.

Thank you.

- My pleasure.

Thank you so much.

- We'll be right back after this.

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(upbeat music) - [Narrator] Raised in Washington Township, Carol Higgins Clark is a bestselling suspense author and actress.

She's the creator of the popular Reagan Reilly books and a holiday series, co-authored with her mother and fellow New Jersey Hall of Fame inductee, Mary Higgins Clark.

She attended Immaculate Heart Academy and grew up spending summers at the Jersey Shore, so it's no surprise that familiar Jersey references populate some of her novels.

She began her writing career while attending college, retyping her mother's transcripts.

Her debut novel "Decked" was nominated for an Agatha Award and an Anthony Award for Best First Novel.

She has gone on to write more than 20 thrilling mysteries.

Carol also studied acting at Beverly Hills Playhouse and has appeared on stage and on screen.

She is a successful voice actress and an audiobook narrator, and received "AudioFile's" Earphones of Excellence Award for her reading of her novel "Jinxed."

It's no mystery to us that Carol Higgins Clark belongs in the New Jersey Hall of Fame.

(upbeat music) - Welcome back to "Remember Them".

And joining us now is Elizabeth Higgins Clark, who's a writer and the granddaughter of Mary Higgins Clark, as well as the niece to Carol Higgins Clark.

It's so nice to have you with us.

- Thank you for having me.

- We just heard from Alafair Burke on the first half of this program, who worked so closely with your grandmother on some of the novels that she wrote, the "Under Suspicion" novels.

And she talked so much to Alafair about Team Clark, about how the family unit was so strong with you, your grandmother, and the rest of your family.

Talk a little bit more about your family and just how close everyone is and was with your grandmother.

- I think, you know, my grandmother was certainly the consummate matriarch, the center of the family.

And I think she was widowed when she was 36 and had five little kids at the time.

And so I think probably a lot of that stemmed back to that time where you know, my dad and his siblings had lost their other parents so young, so tragically.

And so they all really stayed very close to my grandmother.

They all stayed in, you know, geographic closeness and also emotional closeness.

-And New Jersey is so much at the center of that, I know you and your wife weren't living in New Jersey when you all met.

I think you were on the West Coast.

And I know that you decided before your grandmother passed away, and when you wed your wife, you decided your grandmother's property was where you were going to do that.

How did that all come about?

- When Lauren, my wife and I got engaged, we were trying to figure out where to have our wedding and we looked at a, we knew we wanted to do it back east because my grandmother was alive at the time, as you said, and her husband was alive and my grandfather on the other side was alive.

And so we wanted to have it, you know, it would have been a lot to ask them to travel at that stage to Los Angeles where we were living at the time.

So we came back to the East Coast, looked at a bunch of venues, weren't overwhelmed by any of them.

And then we were actually staying in my grandmother's, the guest house she had on her property.

And Lauren just kind of looked out the window and said, "Well, why don't we do it here in the backyard?"

And from that moment, that's all we wanted to do.

So I'm really, really grateful that we did do it there.

It was a house that had already, you know, created so many memories and had so many celebrations, but that felt for me kind of obviously the biggest one.

- Yeah, and that was in Saddle River, New Jersey, correct?

- Yes.

- And New Jersey was a place that we saw intertwined in so many of her books.

It was mentioned a lot, what was it for your grandmother and even your Aunt Carol as well, that made New Jersey so special for them and just so important to them?

- I think for my grandmother, it was the place that she had raised her kids.

And so her roots were very much there.

You know, even until a month before she died, she would host a New Year's Eve party every year for her friends, the friends that she grew up raising her kids with in Washington Township.

And she would call them, you know, as the years went on, obviously people dropped off due to illness or death.

And by the time I think of the last party, she was calling it the tattered remains because so many of the people were already gone, but she hosted that the week, you know, less than a month before she died.

And I think she saw that as a very important place where her family was raised.

After she got really successful, she did get an apartment in Manhattan and she could have spent a lot more time there.

You know, her social calendar was very full but she didn't do that.

She was really at home often and seeing her children and grandchildren.

- Y our Aunt Carol, her writing style was very different than your grandmother's.

A lot of the times, you know, obviously your grandmother was these suspense novels and your aunt more funny.

Her novels have more of a funny tone.

Is that kinda how she was in real life too for you when you were growing up?

- Yeah, Carol could be very, very, very funny.

My best memories of her are she making people laugh and she was always drawn to comedy and that was the best parts of her.

- And when you now as a mother you have two little ones too, what are you passing along to them about your grandmother?

'Cause I know, and your Aunt Carol as well, 'cause I know they were just so important to you in your life and in your childhood.

- I think, you know, I would say my grandmother's influence is all over me in many different ways.

So I'm sure there are things small and subtle that happen all the time that get passed on to them.

I think the biggest thing that I'd love for them to grow up with is a real sense of possibility and tenacity.

And I think my grandmother was exemplary in that regard.

I don't know how, she kind of just had the fortitude to always keep going, even when the circumstances were so stacked against her, but she did.

And she never seemed to feel sorry for herself, even in those really dark moments.

And so I think that's the biggest thing I'd want to pass on to my children.

And I also know that a lot of my grandmother's belief in herself came from her own mother and how she always built her up and touted her accomplishments.

And so I think I'd also like to pass that on to my kids too.

And we talk about her, my grandmother wrote two children's books and those are in their bedroom and sometimes they look at them, they're a little, they know who Mimi is, that's what we called her.

And when we go, my family still owns the house on Cape Cod that she had.

And so we talk about her a lot there and that it's Mimi's house.

And yeah, she's a staple in our conversation.

- And that's so beautiful.

And there's so much more you can learn about in her memoir that she wrote many years before her passing, but there's something she wrote in here that I'm gonna read just to end the segment with.

She said, "There's an old saying, if you wanna be happy for a year, win the lottery.

If you wanna be happy for life, love what you do.

People sometimes ask me in a bewildered tone, are you still writing?

My answer is, what else would I do?"

" And you saw her writing right up till the end, didn't you?

- Yes, and there was never, I think... Putting down the pen would have been death, you know?

It's just not something that she was ever going to do.

I think that she had, I think she even called it in that book, something like a burning need to write.

And I think that that was with her.

It was almost compulsive sometimes.

There was no sense of days off from it.

There were certainly days where she didn't write, but it was not like, she never took breaks, if that makes sense.

She just kind of kept going on something.

- Yeah, she always had it in her from a young age, and then now we get to be and continue to be the recipients of her incredible work for people who follow her, who are advocate readers of her.

So thank you, Elizabeth, for taking the time so we could honor your grandmother and your Aunt Carol as well on.

- My pleasure.

They'd be so happy you're doing this, so thank you.

- Thank you, well, for Steve Adubato and myself, thanks for watching.

We'll see you next time.

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