Daddy's Little Girl

Mary Higgins Clark's Daddy's Little Girl centers on Ellie Cavanaugh, whose older sister Andrea was murdered when Ellie was a child. Ellie's testimony helped convict Rob Westerfield, the privileged young man found near the crime. More than twenty years later, Rob is eligible for parole and continues to insist that he was wrongly accused. Ellie, now an investigative reporter, returns to the case determined to keep him in prison.

Reopening the past means testing the memory that has shaped Ellie's life. She searches for witnesses and physical links that the original investigation left unexplored; Rob's resources and social standing complicate the public story. The closer she comes to weaknesses in the old case, the more immediate the danger becomes.

The suspense depends on a difficult distinction between conviction and certainty. Read for how childhood observation changes when examined by an adult trained to question evidence, and for the pressure placed on a family that has organized grief around one verdict. This account names the original murder, conviction, and parole fight but does not identify the killer or disclose the final evidence.