The Other Woman by Hank Phillippi Ryan wins the Mary Higgins Clark Award!
The Other Woman, by Hank Phillippi Ryan, wins the Mary Higgins Clark Award!
About the Mary Higgins Clark Award: In recognition of their 25 year partnership in crime with best-selling author Mary Higgins Clark, Simon and Schuster has sponsored an award in her name to be given annually for ten years, starting in 2001. The announcement of this unique award honoring the Queen of Suspense was made at the 55th Annual Edgar Allan Poe Awards®, where Ms. Clark was inducted as a Grand Master by the Mystery Writers of America. Nominated books are chosen from those sent to the MWA Edgar Awards® Committees for Best Novel, Best First Novel, and Best Paperback Novel. The winner is selected by a special MWA committee for the book most closely written in the Mary Higgins Clark tradition, according to the following guidelines set forth by Ms. Clark.
About The Other Woman by Hank Phillippi Ryan: Jane Ryland was a rising star in television news…until she refused to reveal a source and lost everything. Now a disgraced newspaper reporter, Jane isn’t content to work on her assigned puff pieces, and finds herself tracking down a candidate’s secret mistress just days before a pivotal Senate election.
Detective Jake Brogan is investigating a possible serial killer. Twice, bodies of unidentified women have been found by a bridge, and Jake is plagued by a media swarm beginning to buzz about a “bridge killer” hunting the young women of Boston.
As the body count rises and election looms closer, it becomes clear to Jane and Jake that their cases are connected…and that they may be facing a ruthless killer who will stop at nothing to silence a scandal.
Dirty politics, dirty tricks, and a barrage of final twists, The Other Woman is the first in an explosive new series by Hank Phillippi Ryan. Seduction, betrayal, and murder—it’ll take a lot more than votes to win this election.
Congratulations to Hank Phillippi Ryan and to her editor, Kristin Sevick Brown!
“Investigative television reporter Ryan fulfills the promise of her first Jane Ryland mystery The Other Woman (2012), as she blends a social issue — the cost to young children of an overworked and underfunded foster care system — into a crisp, fast-moving police procedural featuring reverberating illegalities, increasing danger and suspense, and crackling sexual tension between Ryland and Brogan. Another winner from Ryan.”Reporter Jane Ryland is on the trail of something big enough to ensure her continued employment on the downsizing Boston Republic when an anonymous threatening phone call makes her editor pull her off the story. Sidelined, she takes time to help former colleague Tuck Cameron, an adoptee just paired with her birth mother, who’s distressed that the private Brannigan adoption agency that placed her made a mistake and that she’s “the wrong girl.” Jane still continues to ferret out angles of the story of an unidentified woman killed in a house with two young toddlers present and evidence of a missing baby, a case being worked by her not-quite-lover Detective Jake Brogan. As Jake tries to avoid Jane on the job, he also has to deal with a case involving two top Brannigan administrators found dead days apart under questionable conditions. Investigative television reporter Ryan fulfills the promise of her first Jane Ryland mystery, The Other Woman (2012), as she blends a social issue — the cost to young children of an overworked and underfunded foster care system — into a crisp, fast-moving police procedural featuring reverberating illegalities, increasing danger and suspense, and crackling sexual tension between Ryland and Brogan. Another winner from Ryan. — Michele Leber
