The Christmas Thief by Mary Higgins Clark and Carol Higgins Clark was the first novel I have read by either of these prolific mystery writers. I didn’t find the mystery content all that intriguing, though, as the novel seemed to be more of a comedy. The plot involved the theft of a Christmas tree, and not just any Christmas tree, but the one chosen to stand in front of Rockefeller Center in New York.
Packy Noonan had hidden a flask filled with diamonds on a branch on this very tree just before he started to serve a twelve-year prison sentence. Now that he has been released right before Christmas, he has to get to this tree and find the diamonds before it is chopped down. The Christmas Thief tells the story about Packy and his team of bumbling idiots as they plot their nighttime lumberjacking only to discover that someone else has beaten them to it. Who else would want to chop down the Rockefeller Center tree? And why?
The two authors collaborated by involving each of their own novels’ characters to work together to find the thief. This book was a speedy read, at only 298 pages with a large font and wide gaps between the lines. I knew when I picked it up that, judging from the layout alone, the action wouldn’t lag and the tree thief wouldn’t be on the run for long. The authors didn’t have the space to flesh out a mystery to keep me on the edge of my seat, so the blurb on the back cover, touting Mary Higgins Clark as “America’s Queen of Suspense” seemed anticlimactic. Thus the overall story read more like an episode of Three’s Company than Miss Marple.