Where Are the Children?

Where Are the Children? is a thriller by the American writer Mary Higgins Clark, published in 1975. It is the book that established her as a writer of suspense, and it begins with a woman whose past has already destroyed one life.

Nancy Harmon's first marriage ended in horror. Her two small children died, she was charged over their deaths, and although the charges did not hold, the judgement of the people around her did. She changed her name, moved to the other side of the country and began again.

Now she is married to a man she loves and has two more children, and her days are full of ordinary happiness. On her birthday she lets the two of them go out to play in the yard while she takes a shower, and when she comes back they are gone, with one red mitten hanging from the chain that holds up their swing. The novel is about the same nightmare beginning a second time, and about whether the truth of what happened the first time can be established before it repeats.