Fans of Mary Higgins Clark and cozy mysteries will relish this Christmas confection. Unlike her previous holiday novel, Silent Night, All Through the Night is virtually free of life-and-death crime. Rather, it is a Dickensian tale of good deeds rewarded and crimes punished.

The wintry story begins on the Upper West Side of Manhattan with 18-year-old Sondra Lewis, an aspiring violinist, tearfully leaving her baby on the steps of St. Clement's Church. Unbeknownst to her, Lenny Centino is robbing that same church on the same night, with his attention particularly on the Church's diamond inlaid chalice. He finds a buggy outside the church and uses it for cover as he flees. Only later does he realize that his take for the night includes the infant Stellina (Italian for star). The narrative then abruptly moves ahead seven years. Clark's lottery-winning protagonists, Alvirah and her husband Willy (introduced in Weep No More, My Lady) return for some amateur sleuthing. Sister Cordelia's thrift shop doubles as an after-school recreation place for neighborhood children (including a shy little girl named Star), but the building has been condemned. Bessie Maher had vowed she was leaving the house to the nun and her children. Now that she is gone, the will indicates that the tenants of the house, Vic and Linda Baker, are the true heirs. As December rushes on towards Christmas, Alvirah struggles to put things right before the children are left in the cold.

Like the best holiday stories, All Through the Night steers toward sentimentality, but it veers back on course with narrative wit and Alvirah's charm. Clark's prose is lean and her plotting is brisk. This is a mystery that would be a pleasure to share aloud with a family gathered at the fireplace for some holiday cheer. --Patrick O'Kelley

From Library Journal
Clark's popular lottery winners, amateur sleuth Alvirah and her husband, Willy, are getting ready for Christmas. When the local after-school center is threatened and a friend's will is contested, Alvirah goes on the job. Before long, she also finds herself trying to locate a child abandoned seven years earlier by a young mother and trying to solve the mystery of a stolen chalice. Normally known for her suspenseful stories, Clark (You Belong to Me, Audio Reviews, LJ 6/1/98) doesn't quite deliver. The listener isn't all that surprised at any of the revelations at the end of the program. The reading, by the author's daughter, best-selling writer and actor Carol Higgins Clark, is lively. However, numerous characters and little voice differentiation make the narrative difficult to follow. The author is always popular, but this is not an essential purchase. Recommended for larger collections.AAdrienne Furness, Lockport P.L., NYCopyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
Best-seller Clark has written another Christmas seasonal mystery, and like Silent Night (1995), it's a lighthearted suspense tale that her readers are sure to enjoy. Clark brings back two of her most popular characters, Alvirah, the former cleaning woman, now lottery winner turned amateur detective, and Alvirah's stoic husband, Willy. The story opens with a young, unmarried woman who abandons her newborn child on the steps of a church on the Upper West Side of Manhattan; at the same time, inside the church, a thief is stealing a diamond-embedded chalice. While making his escape, the thief notices the baby in the stroller and takes off with the infant, disappearing into the night. Seven years later, during the Christmas season, Alvirah, caught in the thick of another mystery, becomes involved in the matter of the missing chalice and the child stolen from the rectory steps, and as usual, she soon has the whole business sorted out very neatly. A short, easy read that Clark's many fans will be asking for. Kathleen Hughes

From Kirkus Reviews
Lottery winners Alvirah and Willy Meehan are the guests of honor in this second helping of Christmas turkey from megaselling Clark (Silent Night, 1995, etc.). Seven years ago, rising-star violinist Sondra Lewis, following an unwise dalliance with a married pianist, had the misfortune to abandon her newborn baby outside St. Clement's Church just as low-level thief Lenny Centino was looking for some cover after stealing St. Clement's prized silver chalice. Oblivious to its cargo, Lenny grabbed Sondra's stroller before she could get through to Monsignor Thomas Ferris, and took stroller and baby home to his aunt Lilly, who raised the little girl as Jimmy's. Now the time is at hand for Providence, in the form of retired cleaning woman Alvirah and her husband Willy, to set things straight by restoring Stellina Centino to the forlorn mother who's come back to town in the hopes of picking up some word of her. And there's more work for the redoubtable $40 million winners this Christmastide. Alvirah's friend Bessie Durkin Maher, the housekeeper who married widower Judge Mayer to keep her job, has died; but instead of leaving her house to the after-school center run by Willy's sister, Sister Cordelia, an 11th-hour will leaves it to her house-proud tenants Vic and Linda Bakeror so it seems to duller wits than Alvirah's. Vowing to think like Poirot, Alvirah goes to work righting wrongs and slaying dragons. Though Alvirah and Willy are both toned down from the oblivious consumers of The Lottery Winner (1994), the dragons themselves are so windedneither Lenny Centino nor those precious frauds the Bakers have enough presence to headline a third-grade pageantthat their misdoings are less like crimes than detours, temporary swerves from the way of true happiness. If the resulting tale doesn't provide the menace or suspense of Clark's full-length novels (You Belong to Me, p. 418, etc.), though, it does succeedas the Epilogue tell usin providing a ``human-interest story'' that's ``especially appropriate for the Christmas season.'' Pass the fruitcake. (First printing of 1,500,000) -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Review
Wichita Falls Times Record News (TX) Fans of Mary Higgins Clark will enjoy this Christmas treat.... All Through The Night is a package of intrigue just waiting to be opened.

Book Description
With Silent Night, Mary Higgins Clark, America's Queen of Suspense, gave her listeners their best Christmas present ever. Now, with All Through the Night, she once again celebrates the Christmas season with a tale of suspense that will keep us listening -- all through the night. At the center of the novel are two of Mary Higgins Clark's most beloved characters, Alvirah, the lottery winner turned amateur sleuth, and her husband Willy, both of them caught up in a Christmas mystery that calls on all of Alvirah's deductive powers, as well as Willy's world-class common sense. When the story begins, Willy is looking forward to playing Santa Claus at the after-school center his sister Cordelia has established to care for the children of working parents on New York's Upper West Side, while Alvirah is busy with rehearsals for the Christmas pageant. But suddenly a pall falls upon the Christmas cheer. The center itself is threatened with being closed down, a substitute that has been promised is withdrawn, a desperate young woman appears who begs for Alvirah's help in finding the baby she abandoned seven years earlier, and -- the final blow -- the little girl who is to play the Blessed Mother in the Christmas pageant vanishes.... Alvirah is soon on the trail of the truth, which must be found before Christmas, which leads to the theft of a valued chalice that is somehow at the heart of the mystery. A missing chalice. A missing child. A desperate mother. Who but Alvirah can sort it out in time for Christmas?

Download Description
A desperate mother. Her missing child. A stolen chalice. With Silent Night, Mary Higgins Clark, America's own Queen of Suspense, gave her readers their best Christmas present ever. Now, with All Through the Night, she once again celebrates the Christmas season with a tale of suspense that will keep readers turning the pages -- all through the night. At the center of the novel are two of Mary Higgins Clark's most beloved characters, Alvirah, the lottery winner turned amateur sleuth, and her husband, Willy, both of them caught up in a Christmas mystery that calls on all of Alvirah's deductive powers, as well as Willy's world-class common sense. The story begins when a young unmarried woman leaves her newborn child on the rectory doorstep at a church on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. At the same moment, inside the church, a young man is stealing a treasured artifact, a chalice adorned with a single star-shaped diamond. Both the infant and the chalice disappear. Seven years later, a few weeks before Christmas, Alvirah and Willy are busy helping Willy's sister Cordelia, a nun who runs a thrift shop that doubles as an after-school shelter for neighborhood kids, prepare for the upcoming Christmas pageant. The future of the shelter is threatened, however, when the city condemns the building for that use, and it is further jeopardized when a nearby brownstone to which the shelter was to be moved turns out to have been willed to a young couple who were tenants in the building. Alvirah refuses to believe that the will is genuine and sets out to prove that the couple are con artists. Soon she is involved in the mystery of the chalice and the child. In All Through the Night, Mary Higgins Clark has fashioned a Christmas gift for all her readers.

About the Author
Mary Higgins Clark is the author of sixteen novels and three short story collections, all of which have been national bestsellers. She lives in Saddle River, New Jersey.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

The Queen of Suspense arrives with a special tale for the holidays, featuring the return of two of her best-loved characters. A baby left in a rectory on Christmas Eve, a furtive burglar, and an accidental kidnapping fifteen years in the past leave a mystery to be solved amid the snows and lights of a New York City December. Former cleaning lady and amateur sleuth Alvirah Meehan, with oft-befuddled but always trustworthy mate Willy, return to the pages after appearances in the bestsellers Weep No More, My Lady and The Lottery Winner. Favorite characters, a seasonal tale and another Clark classic promise a triple-decker hit!

FROM THE CRITICS

Library Journal

Clark's popular lottery winners, amateur sleuth Alvirah and her husband, Willy, are getting ready for Christmas. When the local after-school center is threatened and a friend's will is contested, Alvirah goes on the job. Before long, she also finds herself trying to locate a child abandoned seven years earlier by a young mother and trying to solve the mystery of a stolen chalice. Normally known for her suspenseful stories, Clark (You Belong to Me, Audio Reviews, LJ 6/1/98) doesn't quite deliver. The listener isn't all that surprised at any of the revelations at the end of the program. The reading, by the author's daughter, best-selling writer and actor Carol Higgins Clark, is lively. However, numerous characters and little voice differentiation make the narrative difficult to follow. The author is always popular, but this is not an essential purchase. Recommended for larger collections.--Adrienne Furness, Lockport P.L., NY

Kirkus Reviews

Lottery winners Alvirah and Willy Meehan are the guests of honor in this second helping of Christmas turkey from megaselling Clark (Silent Night, 1995, etc.).

Seven years ago, rising-star violinist Sondra Lewis, following an unwise dalliance with a married pianist, had the misfortune to abandon her newborn baby outside St. Clement's Church just as low-level thief Lenny Centino was looking for some cover after stealing St. Clement's prized silver chalice. Oblivious to its cargo, Lenny grabbed Sondra's stroller before she could get through to Monsignor Thomas Ferris, and took stroller and baby home to his aunt Lilly, who raised the little girl as Jimmy's. Now the time is at hand for Providence, in the form of retired cleaning woman Alvirah and her husband Willy, to set things straight by restoring Stellina Centino to the forlorn mother who's come back to town in the hopes of picking up some word of her. And there's more work for the redoubtable $40 million winners this Christmastide. Alvirah's friend Bessie Durkin Maher, the housekeeper who married widower Judge Mayer to keep her job, has died; but instead of leaving her house to the after-school center run by Willy's sister, Sister Cordelia, an 11th-hour will leaves it to her house-proud tenants Vic and Linda Baker—or so it seems to duller wits than Alvirah's. Vowing to think like Poirot, Alvirah goes to work righting wrongs and slaying dragons. Though Alvirah and Willy are both toned down from the oblivious consumers of The Lottery Winner (1994), the dragons themselves are so winded—neither Lenny Centino nor those precious frauds the Bakers have enough presence to headline a third-grade pageant—that their misdoings are less like crimes than detours, temporary swerves from the way of true happiness.