We'll Meet Again cannot be simply dismissed as a light thriller. Mary Higgins Clark combines social concerns with significant modern themes in a tightly interwoven story that turns on character. Her structure is carefully planned so that readers gradually gain the information they need to reconstruct the crime and the motive, but the particulars of the ending still come as a surprise—yet a credible one.

1. We'll Meet Again addresses questions about health care in America, specifically the high expense of private medicine but the lapses in quality care with more cost-efficient HMO care. How does Clark make theoretical and social issues come alive? Is her treatment of the issue fair? Credible? Is she addressing the real problems of all HMOs or the potential abuses of some?

2. Jack Kevorkian has made Americans aware of the right to death in a technological society in which machinery...