Clark's latest rivals Agatha Christie's best

       DYING FOR MERCY Mary Jane Clark William Morrow,377 pp,$24.99 ISBN 978-0061286117 By WAKA TSUNODA NEW YORK
       Some thrillers end when a character commits suicide. In Mary Jane Clark's ingeniously plotted Dying for Mercy , everything begins with a suicide committed in a most bizarre manner.
       Innis Wheelock is the husband of Valentina, a former New York governor who also served as ambassador to Italy.While living in Rome, he becomes obsessed with St Francis of Assisi, who taught repentance, and decides he must repent for "ugly things" he has done to ensure his wife's political success.
       Once they return to the exclusive town of Tuxedo Park, New York, Innis renovates their family home to his specifications and renames it,"Pentimento",which comes from "pentire", the Italian word for repent. He then hosts a posh party in honour of St Francis, but before it ends, he is found dead, having stabbed himself in the hands and feet, and his left side, copying the wounds Jesus Christ suffered at his crucifixion.
       Eliza Blake, co-host of the country's premier TV show,KEY to America , and one of the party guests, recalls a cryptic remark Innis made to her earlier that evening:"You care about right and wrong. I know you do." She has no idea what he meant, but takes mobile phone photos of the suicide scene before she is stopped by the police. Examining the photos later, her colleagues at the broadcast network, producer Annabelle Murphy and cameraman B.J. D'Elia,discover the first clue to the intricate puzzle Innis built into Pentimento's architecture. His posthumous hope: As each piece of the puzzle is revealed,each guilty party involved in the "ugly things" will come forward to confess and repent.
       Of course, there is someone who doesn't want the puzzle solved and longburied secrets to come out. This shadowy figure begins bumping off potential threats in a grisly manner that mirrors Innis's obsession with religion.
       As Agatha Christie did with her classic,And Then There were None , Clark deftly combines the clue-searching and puzzlesolving fun of mysteries, and the actionpacked and emotion-driven narrative thrust of thrillers. Her usual short, tothe-point chapters, lucid prose, numerous suspects and a faceless murderer's creepy monologues work together to keep the suspense at its chilliest level and the story moving at a brisk clip.
       Eliza, who starred in Clark's previous novels such as Close to You and Do You Want to Know a Secret?again has the dubious honour of being almost murdered. She makes an attractive protagonist,but Annabelle,the memorable heroine of Nowhere to Run ,almost overshadows Eliza with her brain power and the strength of her character.This intrepid journalist could very well be the alter ego of the author, who worked as a producer-writer at CBS before turning to writing full-time.