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The Queen of Suspense

© Megan Drummond

Over 40 rejection slips darkened her mailbox before she sold a short story for $100 in 1956. Her first attempt at a novel, Aspire to the Heavens, a biography of George Washington, was remaindered as soon as it came off the press. These are just two of the obstacles that the world’s best-selling mystery author had to overcome before her career launched into what it is today.

Mary Higgins Clark was born in New York City in 1929. She is of Irish decent and believes that her heritage has been an important influence on her writing. ‘The Irish are, by nature, storytellers,” she says.

Mary has had the kind of life that people automatically think of when a great author is mentioned: the stereotypical life of hardships and seemingly insurmountable obstacles mixed with rich life experiences. The life of character-strengthening experiences began when Mary was 10 years old and her father died, leaving her mother to raise Mary and her two brothers alone.

After high school graduation, Mary went to secretarial school in order to get a job and help support her family. She worked as a secretary at an advertising agency for three years. After years at a desk job, travel fever struck Mary in 1949 and she decided to see the world by becoming a stewardess on Pan American Airline’s international flights. Her run was Europe, Africa and Asia. During her year as a stewardess, Mary encountered more of the world than she thought she’d ever see. She was in a riot in Syria and on the last flight into the former Czechoslovakia before the Iron Curtain was lowered.

After the excitement of seeing the world, Mary got married and settled into a life that included the start of her writing career. She received over 40 rejections before Extension Magazine bought her first short story six years later. Mary still has that letter of acceptance framed.

Eight years after she sold her first story, Mary was left a widow with five children to raise when her husband suffered a heart attack. She went to work writing radio scripts and also decided to try writing books. She woke at 5 am each day and wrote until she had to get her children ready for school at 7 am. When her first book, the above-mentioned Aspire to the Heavens, flopped, Mary decided to try her hand at suspense. In 1975, she wrote and released Where Are The Children?, a book that became a bestseller and marked a turning point in Mary’s life and career.