I'll Be Seeing You

Clark always has a staunch heroine and a topical story to tell. This time her star is Meghan Collins, a spunky TV reporter who is aghast when, on a hospital assignment, she finds a murdered girl who is her double. The topicality involves a clinic that offers ``assisted reproduction,'' which enables women to conceive through in-vitro fertilization. A mysterious Romanian who tends the embryos is murdered, and it is discovered she was unqualified for the job. Why then did a prestigious placement firm, in which Meghan's beloved father Edwin was a partner, recommend her for it? And where is Edwin? Apparently a victim of a spectacular highway accident, there are odd indications he is still alive. And what role does obsessive parking attendant Bernie Heffernan, a creepy Peeping Tom, play in it all? To call Clark's latest plot complicated is an understatement. As usual, however, it moves swiftly, painlessly and forgettably to a predictably upbeat conclusion, in which Meghan snags an erstwhile admirer she feared she had lost. Clark's formula, to place attractive women in danger and have their own pluck and skill resolve the outcome, attracts a large readership, though the merely workmanlike writing, four-square characterization and needlessly knotty plot make I'll Be Seeing You a harder sell than usual. Literary Guild main selection and Reader's Digest Condensed Book selection. (May)