SILENT NIGHT

Who better than Clark, the patron saint of damsels and children in distress, to reheat the milk of human kindness in this Christmas fable for the '90s? Waiting on line to look at the Christmas Eve displays in the windows at Saks Fifth Avenue, Brian Dornan sees somebody in the crowd pick up the wallet his distracted mother Catherine has just droppeda wallet containing hundreds of his sick father's dollars and the St. Christopher medal Catherine's own mother insisted would help Tom Dornan battle his leukemia. Since he can't get his mother's attention, Brian takes off after the thiefnot knowing that she's Cally Hunter, the terrified sister of Jimmy Siddons, a cop killer who's just shot his way out of Rikers Island and is planning to stop off at his sister's for whatever fast money he can cadge en route to Canada and freedom. In the twinkling of an eye, Jimmy has made off with Brian and the Christopher medal; Cally, who unwisely helped Jimmy the last time he was on the lam, is sweating bullets about whether to tip off the hard-bitten police detectives and—if she gets sent up the river—risk dooming her own daughter to a foster home; Catherine is broadcasting heartrending radio appeals for her son; and cops from every corner of New York are looking for Jimmy. Catherine, who doesn't share her mother's faith in St. Christopher, is frantic, but you won't be unless you're new to Clark's world of Reader's Digest suspense; after all, with one possible exception, Jimmy Siddons is the only person in the sovereign state of New York who isn't basically a nice guy, and what chance does evil have against a team like that? Clark's huge audience, nostalgic for the days when Christopher was a fully accredited saint, are bound to swallow this winsome fantasy in a single gulp before the Christmas turkey is cold. (First printing of 750,000; Literary Guild main selection; author tour)