Best-selling Regan Reilly author and made-for-TV star Carol Higgins Clark dies, aged 66

Her mother was suspense writer Mary Higgins Clark

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Best-selling author and made-for-TV movie star Carol Higgins Clark has died, aged 66.

Clark, who is best known for writing an 18-book series focused on Private Investigator Regan Reilly, had appendix cancer. She died in hospital in New York.

As well as creating the character of Reilly, Clark appeared in numerous TV adaptations of her books.

Clark, whose mother was suspense writer Mary Higgins Clark, started out as an actor in made-for-TV movies in the 1970s, including Who Killed Amy Lang and A Cry In The Night, which was based on a novel by Mary.

She wrote her first Reilly book, titled Decked, in 1992 when she was 36, and also co-wrote four Christmas-themed novels with her mother, who died in 2020.

Clark, who was also an audiobook narrator, was inducted into the New Jersey Hall of Fame in 2016, which was presented to her by her mother, who was previously hailed in 2011.

She is survived by her siblings, Marilyn, Warren and David Clark, and by her nieces and nephews.

According to her obituary, a wake is set to place on Monday (19 June) at the Frank E Campbell Funeral Chapel on Madison Avenue in Manhattan followed by a funeral mass on Tuesday (20 June) at the Church of St Vincent Ferrer on Lexington Avenue in Manhattan.