Where Are the Children? was Mary Higgins Clark's first novel and she says she drew the idea for the novel from a newspaper story. As the mother of five herself, the tragedy of missing children appealed to her as containing the germ of a true and yet dramatic human dilemma. Through writing her first novel, Mary Higgins Clark discovered many of the social concerns she has pursued in her succeeding thrillers. As the title of this book suggests, one of its major concerns is with what happens to children in a world fraught with dangers both from outside and especially from inside the family. Often, as in this novel, the focus of her narratives is on a young mother and her children, and, usually but not always, the woman has a mysterious past which pursues her in the form of an obsessed male figure. The male...