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FBI agent Dillon Savich is driving down an isolated stretch of road on the way to meet his wife, Lacey Sherlock, and their son, Sean, for a much-needed vacation. Suddenly, a woman jumps into his car's path and causes a near accident. He chases her to a large estate home. She is obsessed with a man inside who is trying to kill her. When Savich tries to help her, she flees in terror. Savich's call for help with the local Sheriff gets sympathy but no definitive action. According to Sheriff Doozer Harms, the Barrister house on Clayton Road has been abandoned and vacant. The young woman Savich described with excellent detail was Samantha Barrister, murdered thirty years earlier.
The following morning, his getaway grinds to a halt when a phone call summons both him and his agent wife back to Washington, D.C. Supreme Court Justice Stewart Califano is dead, murdered in the Supreme Court Library. The Saviches are in charge of the federal investigation and will work with local detective Ben Raven. Califano's death is brutal; he was garroted by a thin wire. The murderer is a professional. To complicate matters, Justice Califano's stepdaughter, Callie Markham, is a crack journalist on the Washington newspaper's staff. Raven accepts her help with family information when she becomes a willing sidekick after taking a leave of absence from her job.
Eight previous well-received FBI thrillers give author Catherine Coulter credibility in BLOWOUT, a fast-moving but logical mystery. The right amount of leakage makes the reader lean one way toward the crime's solution, then veer in another when clues lead in a different direction. Savich's encounter with the "dead woman" on the moonlit road in rural Pennsylvania is a nagging unfinished piece to a complicated puzzle.
The murdered Justice leaves a trail of questionable companions, his three legal assistants at the top of the list. When two of them come up dead, the FBI struggles to keep the third, Elaine LaFleurette, alive. Meanwhile, clues lead to the murderer, a contract killer who has been silent for more than a decade. Savich stays a step ahead of Gunter Grass, the suspected killer, when he hides LaFleurette in his home. But rapid-fire events compromise their safety.
The Justice's widow has a close-knit circle of four long-time friends: Janette Weaverton, Anna Clifford, Juliette Trevor and Bitsy St. Pierre. During the course of the investigation, the four are a formidable group, protecting Margaret Califano from intrusions into her past and present personal life. Their smothering protectorate stifles the agents' forward progress. Markham finds her loyalty to her stepfather's reputation and her love for his memory at odds when confronted by the realities in the case. And she has become more than a sidekick to Ben Raven when their friendship takes a personal turn.
Loose ends keep both cases in turmoil until the final interviews conclude. The results are acceptable but not necessarily neat. Coulter writes with vigor, yet is sympathetic to her characters' feelings. For her empathy, she can be allowed to exit with cases solved but not totally resolved. She is a prolific writer, and BLOWOUT leaves a thirst for the next Savich and Sherlock story to unfold from her computer.
--- Reviewed by Judy Gigstad
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