Pre-numbered label used for registration.

paperback
356pp
published, 2005

FROM OUR EDITORS
The Barnes & Noble Review
Secrets, surprises, and suspense are the hallmarks of the novels in Catharine Coulter's bestselling series of contemporary FBI thrillers. That has been true ever since The Cove came out in 1996, with its chilling story of a woman on the run and the FBI agent who saved her.

Coulter's Blowout heralds the return of handsome, perceptive Detective Ben Raven (from Blindside) of the Metropolitan Police Department in Washington, D.C., working again with the ever-popular FBI couple, Lacey Sherlock and Dillon Savich. Raven is less than pleased when his federal agent friends ask him to team up with investigative reporter Callie Markham in their new case involving the brutal murder of a Supreme Court justice who happens to be Callie's stepfather. And it soon becomes clear that the crafty killer isn't about to stop at one victim, no matter how highly placed.

With the press keeping a spotlight on the growing peril in the nation's capital, Savich must also come to grips with a more elusive case he came upon by chance. Following a minor traffic accident while on vacation in the Poconos, Savich encountered a desperate young woman who pleaded for his help and led him to the scene of a violent crime…only to disappear. When Savich goes to the local authorities, he's told that everything he "witnessed" took place almost 30 years earlier -- a revelation supported by evidence (or lack of it) when he returns to the scene and finds that the elegant house he'd searched before was now a ramshackle shell. But that doesn't mean Savich can forget the fear that haunted the woman who came to him for help…or change her need for justice. Sue Stone

FROM THE CRITICS
Publishers Weekly
The latest in prolific novelist Coulter's series of FBI thrillers once again features high-powered husband and wife team Dillon Savich and Lacey Sherlock. In the middle of a long-awaited vacation with their young son, the two are called to investigate the heinous midnight murder of a Supreme Court Justice, committed in the Court's library despite tight, round-the-clock security. Known as a moderate, Justice Stewart Califano was undoubtedly contemplating an upcoming case involving the death penalty for psychopathic juveniles when he was brutally garroted, his fingers sliced off as he struggled to escape. The FBI is aided in the case by the CIA, Secret Service and metropolitan police as well as by the judge's stepdaughter, an investigative reporter for the Washington Post. Yet within 48 hours, two of the Justice's young law clerks are murdered in the same grisly fashion-the lovable Daniel strangled with his own St. Christopher medal chain, and the formidable Eliza killed while she's on the phone with Savich. An unrelated supernatural side plot is distracting, and the case's solution comes from out of left field, but fans of the author's fictional duo will get their fix-the climactic face-off takes place in Savich and Sherlock's own living room. Agent, Robert Gottlieb. (June 15) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

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