Friday, April 10, 2009

Just Take My Heart by Mary Higgins Clark


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Natalie Raines, one of Broadway's brightest stars, accidentally discovers who killed her former roommate and sets in motion a series of shocking events that puts more than one life in extreme peril.

While Natalie and her roommate, Jamie Evans, were both struggling young actresses, Jamie had been involved with a mysterious married man to whom she referred only by nickname. Natalie comes face to face with him years later and inadvertently addresses him by the nickname Jamie had used. A few days later, Natalie is found in her home in Closter, New Jersey, dying from a gunshot wound.

Immediately the police suspect Natalie's theatrical agent and soon-to-be-ex-husband, Gregg Aldrich. He had long been a "person of interest" and was known to have stalked Natalie to find out if she was seeing another man. But no charges are brought against him until two years later, when Jimmy Easton, a career criminal, suddenly comes forward to claim that Aldrich had tried to hire him to kill his wife. Easton knows details about the Aldrich home that only someone who had been there -- to plan a murder, for instance -- could possibly know.

The case is a plum assignment for Emily Wallace, an attractive thirty-two-year-old assistant prosecutor. As 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, her boss 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 that 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.

Emily Wallace, assistant prosecutor, has just been handed a case that could make her career. Two years earlier successful actress Natalie Raines is murdered and they finally have enough evidence to arrest her murderer - her estranged husband Greg Aldrich. As the story unfolds we learn that Emily not only lost her husband in Iraq, but she also had a heart transplant two years earlier. Something that plays a big part later on in the story. As the trial progresses and Emily has a strong case against Greg, she starts to wonder if she's doing the right thing. Does she have the right man? Maybe should she follow the feeling she has in her gut? Or could Natalie's death have something to do with the murder of her college roommate 20 years earlier? Meanwhile, Emily has a creepy new neighbor who is intent on getting into her home and "touching everything she wore". As the trial ends, the questions don't ~ and someone wants Emily dead. Is it the psycho next door or someone that has something to do with Natalie's death? Fans of Mary Higgins Clark, one of the best in this genre, has done it again. A book filled with mystery, suspense and an interesting twist that will make the reader want to know more about Emily and what she's been through.

1 comment:

Missy B. said...

This one's on my wishlist...sounds good!!