Clare McNally's novels include:
Tropes associated with Clare McNally's novels:
- Abusive Parents:
- Both protagonist and antagonist in Ghost Light have one. Bonnie's mother locks her in the cupboard and ends up accidentally killing her. Nate's father was emotionally abusive to him and his wife, calling him a failure. Nate has shades of "Well Done, Son" Guy as he wants to prove his deceased father wrong.
- Evan in Good Night, Sweet Angel is a horrendous example of this, Emily truly considers him The Dreaded, and the reader will never look at a pizza cutter in the same way again.
- Asshole Victim:
- Most McNally victims are decent enough individuals with one or two exceptions. Georgie in Somebody Come and Play is a drug-using high-school drop-out with an unhealthy fascination for Cassie, who's 10. Hard to miss him when he goes.
- Very much downplayed with Mr. Percy in Ghost House Revenge; he may be an overly strict teacher but his actions save the children when the antagonist tries playing Car Fu in order to kill Gina and the other school kids.
- Big Bad Ensemble: There are a few in Good Night, Sweet Angel. Infant Emily is under attack from her father's ghost, Tara is a corrupting influence and Tara's mother, Laura, wants her daughter to possess Emily.
- Creepy Child: A Clare staple. Creepy ghost children to boot, usually. Bonniein Ghost Light, Nicole Morgan in Somebody Come And Play, Baby Jared in 'What About the Baby' could count as he utterly destroys Big Bad Flora Collins with psychic powers.
- Expy: Nicole Morgan of Bonnie Jackson, both child ghosts trying to reunite with a family member from beyond the grave.
- Old, Dark House: The Hollenbeck mansion, the children's home in Come Down into Darkness and Laura Bayless's house has shades of this. Fairly standard for haunted houses.
- Older Than They Look: Through supernatural means, Flora Collins. Veronica in Blood Relations due to Our Vampires Are Different: Veronica and Nick Andros keep young by mixing plants with the blood of their progeny.
- Razor Apples: Laura does it a few times to Jenn in Good Night, Sweet Angel.
- Sequel Hook:
- At the end of Ghost Light, Nate bumps into Bonnie at the adoption agency.
- The son of the evil scientist in Hear the Children Calling swears revenge.
- Sympathy for the Devil: Discussed and ultimately defied at the end of Somebody Come and Play, while the heroine has some sympathy for Nicole being shanghaied onto the orphan train, separated from her sister and killed by a slaver, but points out it doesn't excuse her actions.
- Tragic Villain:
- Some of the antagonists turn out to be this, Nicole and Bonnie are ghosts of children, desperately trying to reunite with family members at the cost of others' lives.
- Flora in What About the Baby?, she had a baby with a nobleman (Tallisker) who killed said offspring to hide evidence of the tryst. She vowed to take the lives of every firstborn son of the Tallisker generation, Gabrielle and her baby are of that line.
