Dying for Mercy by Mary Jane Clark

From the Publisher

When death shatters the serenity of the exclusive moneyed enclave of Tuxedo Park, New York, Eliza Blake, co-host of KEY to America, is on the scene. While attending a lavish gala at her friends' newly renovated estate, Pentimento, Eliza's host is found dead—a grotesque suicide that is the first act in a macabre and intricately conceived plan to expose sins of the past involving some of the town's most revered citizens.

Determined to find the truth, Eliza and her KEY News colleagues discover that Pentimento holds the key. The glorious mansion is actually a giant "puzzle house", filled with ingenious clues that lead them, one by one, to the victims of a fiendish killer.

As Pentimento gives up its secrets it becomes clear that no amount of wealth or privilege will keep the residents of Tuxedo Park safe. But just when she unearths one final surprise, Eliza comes face to face with a murderer who believes that some puzzles should never be solved.

Publishers Weekly

At the start of bestseller Clark's smooth third Eliza Blake puzzler (after It Only Takes a Moment), the KEY to AmericaTV host is looking forward to attending a party to celebrate the feast day of St. Francis of Assisi at Ennis and Valentina Wheelock's newly renovated villa in Tuxedo Park, N.Y. Soon after Ennis's suicide by stigmata in the villa's greenhouse puts an end to the party, someone begins killing anyone who knows too much about the Wheelocks' connection to a 20-year-old cold case involving an abandoned convertible and its missing owner, landscaper Martin O'Shaughnessy. Each murder mimics "aspects of the Passion of Jesus Christ." As Eliza and her three KEY co-workers, who have dubbed themselves the Sunrise Suspense Society, swing into action, Eliza must fight to avoid becoming headline news herself as the killer's next victim. Those curious about Tuxedo Park will appreciate the well-researched portrait of the real-life exclusive community. (Aug.)

Kirkus Reviews

A penitential suicide opens the door to wholesale homicide in an exclusive suburban enclave. Innis Wheelock, the brains behind wife Valentina's political ascent to the governorship of New York and the ambassadorship to Italy, has always felt guilty about something. As a party dedicated to St. Francis of Assisi winds down in their Tuxedo Park mansion, he does something about it, stabbing himself in the hands, feet and left side in the pattern of Christ's stigmata. But his ritual death is only the first of his posthumous messages. A lesser man might have placed in his safe-deposit box a confession of the conspiracy stretching back over 20 years to an apparently victimless car crash. But Innis, who really liked puzzles, has left behind a series of teasing clues to the secret he took to his grave. As luck would have it, someone else seems bent on scattering those clues through an equally ritualized series of murders designed to keep the secret a secret. Is that someone Innis's best friend Fitzroy Heavener, political operative Peter Nordstrut, Tuxedo Park police chief Clay Vitalli or (horrors!) all of them? And will TV morning-show host Eliza Blake, still fearful in the aftermath of her daughter's kidnapping (It Only Takes a Moment, 2008, etc.), put the clues together in time to save herself from the killer?Clark lavishes all the pointless ingenuity of Who Killed the Robins Family? on a transparent mystery, except there's no cash prize for beating Eliza to the solution. Agent: Jennifer Rudolph Walsh/William Morris Agency

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