Daddy's Little Girl [Mass Market Paperback]

When she was only seven years old, Ellie Cavanaugh's fifteen-year-old beautiful high school student sister, Andrea, was viciously murdered, her head violently smashed in by a cold-blooded killer, and Ellie was the one that first found Andrea's body in the garage of old Mrs. Dorothy Westerfield, a powerful and enormously rich woman coming from a socially prominent family in the city of Oldham-on-the-Hudson, New York. Ellie had heard heavy, uneven breathing, and then a high-pitched giggle while in the garage, and swears it was Rob Westerfield, Dorothy's nineteen-year-old grandson and Andrea's secret boyfriend, in the garage with her.

It was Ellie's tearful, heartbreaking testimony that convicted Rob Westerfield for the murder of Andrea Cavanaugh. But even with the murderer behind bars, Ellie's family is still torn apart. Her parents divorce, and Ellie's mother travels with her all over the country, hardly staying in one place for more than a year. Meanwhile, Ellie's father remarries and has a son, Teddy, five years later. Twenty-two years later, after Ellie's mother has died, Ellie moves out to Atlanta, Georgia, and becomes an investigative reporter for the Atlanta News. She contemplates her resentment and distance from her father, and has no desire to see him---or his new wife or Teddy---ever again.

After twenty two years in prison, Rob Westerfield has served his sentence for murdering Andrea in prison, and parole is inevitable. Rob had been up for parole two previous times, but Ellie vehemently went against it. But finally, Ellie realizes that no matter what she does, Rob will be released. In an effort to put Rob back in jail, Ellie travels back up to Oldham, and she begins writing a book focusing on Rob's guilt in murdering Andrea. She has also opened a website, which has made the Westerfields---who just happened to find a new witness to say Paulie Stroebel, a former classmate of Andrea's that had a terrible crush on her---extremely angry.

Rob has newly been released from prison, and as Ellie sifts trough his past, from his days of being withdrawn from preparatory schools, to his days in prison when he may have confessed to another murder, the danger that Ellie is in grows higher by the second, as attempts to take Ellie's life and publicly dehumanize her rapidly occur. Ellie knows that if she can not find a way to have Rob sentenced back into prison for the rest of his life, then sooner or later the Westerfields will have Ellie murdered, just to simply shut her up.

Mary Higgins Clark, "The Queen of Suspense," one of my new all-time favorite authors, has written a great thriller novel. This novel is slightly different from Mary Higgins Clark's others literary works because it is written in first person, a rarity for this author. I found that the first-person made Ellie's story more personal and more believable. Ellie was an amazing, witty, intelligent, and immensely likable protagonist, one of the most well-drawn main characters that Mary Higgins Clark has ever dreamed up. The plot moves smoothly, the characters are deep, and the danger is vividly real; this is one of my favorite by Mary Higgins Clark, and definitely one of her greatest suspense novels ever.

Highly recommended!

I think this book was awsome and once i started readin it i couldn't put it down it's awsome and i'm going to buy all her other books. I think it was really sad what happend to Ellie's sister and I though that she should have been close with her father even though what happend becasue some of us don't always have a good father even though if it's just fiction. I started to think the rob was inoccent and that Paulie was the murder and then i would switch back and forth with my descision but then i got to finish it with in a week of reading it non stop and i absolutly loved it.

Mary Higgins Clark is one of my favorite suspense writers and she did not let me down with this book. Gripping from begining to end. Hard to put down. A definite must read!