Just Take My Heart

In this thriller, Mary Higgins Clark delves into a legal battle over the guilt or innocence of a man accused of murdering his wife. Woven into her plot is a little-understood, eerie but documented medical phenomenon-the emergence of a donor's traits and memories in the recipient of a heart transplant. Natalie Raines, famous Broadway star, is murdered after accidentally discovering who killed her former roommate, Jamie Evans. Natalie's estranged husband, theatrical agent Gregg Aldrich, was known to have stalked Natalie to find out if she was seeing another man, and becomes "a person of interest" in her death. After a career criminal comes forward to claim that Aldrich hired him to kill his wife, a job he decided to turn down, a Grand Jury indicts Gregg for the murder of his wife. Emily Wallace, an attractive thirty-two year old widowed assistant prosecutor, is summoned by her boss, Edward "Ted" Scott Wesley, who tells her that he wants her to handle the case, a plum assignment. She spends increasingly long hours preparing for the trial. A seemingly well-meaning neighbor offers to take care of her dog in her absence. Unaware of his violent past, she gives him a key to her home... As Aldrich's trial is making headlines, Wesley warns Emily that this high-profile case will reveal personal matters about her, such as the fact that she had a heart transplant. And, during the trial, Emily experiences sentiments which defy all reason and continue after Gregg Aldrich's fate is decided by the jury. In the meantime, she does not realize that her own life is now at risk.