title: Heartstopper
author: Henke, Shirl
description: A HIGHBROW SOCIETY DOC
  A successful cardiac surgeon from a socially prominent family, Dr. Corrie Waterstone has seen death in the OR, but never as it occurs in front of her horrified eyes on the causeway into Miami. A man runs in front of her car, then leaps off the high bridge. The police believe it's a suicide, but Barry Barlow was a patient of hers and she doesn't buy it. Then the M.E. rules that even before he hit the water, Barlow's heart exploded, caused by a mysterious drug.
  A LOWBROW HOMICIDE COP
  Frank, alias "Loose" Cannon, is a tough loner from a big Irish family of cops, the only one to attend college and make detective. When he interviews Corrie at the scene of the jump, she irritates him with what he thinks is a superior attitude. But the doc is a credible witness. After finding the victim died under suspicious circumstances, she wants answers. So does he, but he does not want a society broad interfering in his investigation.
  A HEARTSTOPPING CONSPIRACY
  The cop and the doc find Barlow was an unintended victim when they uncover a shadow world where homeless people are kidnapped by a large pharmaceutical company and used in experiments to perfect a new "enhanced interrogation" drug for a rogue government agency. The object is to induce unreasoning fear in the subjects. The tests have only one serious flaw—heart failure before the interrogations are complete. Cannon and Corrie face a final showdown in the dark and deadly Everglades...where coronaries could be contagious.