Catherine Coulter's Bombshell delivers a breakneck plot, magnetic characters and just enough romance to make everything sizzle -- that is to say, exactly what the world loves about her best-selling FBI series. Coulter's husband-and-wife FBI team of Dillon Savich and Lacey Sherlock are one of the most beloved crime-fighting duos in modern fiction. They're back in this seventeenth installment, seamlessly juggling the work of taking down criminals, raising a family, and training up a new generation of agents.
Savich sees great promise in Griffin Hammersmith, a hunky young officer with the face of a Greek god and an uncanny ability to sniff out crime. He invites Griffin to join his elite FBI squad in Washington, D.C. But Griffin's road trip to the capital is interrupted when his sister, Delsey, is found naked, unconscious, and covered in someone else's blood after a wild party at the home of a professor at her prestigious music college in Maestro, Virginia.
Griffin's investigation lands him in the middle of the Rockwellian college town. But behind the snow-covered bungalows, string quartets and smiling waitresses pouring an endless stream of sweet tea, Maestro harbors deadly secrets. Giggling groupies are willing to do anything for their famous music professors, and the town is infested with MS-13, one of the world's most notorious street gangs. Griffin soon realizes that finding the killer isn't just a matter of law enforcement -- it's a matter of saving his sister's life. But his investigation gets complicated when he falls for Delsey's best friend, Anna, a beautiful violinist with a big heart and an equally big secret.
Meanwhile, the body of a young man is discovered at the foot of the Lincoln Memorial in D.C. Savich and Sherlock learn that the dead man is the grandson of the former Federal Reserve chairman. His murder may be revenge for his grandfather's role in the banking collapse -- or something even darker. After the killer posts photos of the corpse online, Savich and Sherlock must follow the trail down an Internet rabbit hole, through D.C.'s marble corridors of power, and into the shining homes of the city's richest and most ruthless politicians.
Hang on tight. The double-barreled plot explodes in the first chapter and doesn't slow down until the breathtaking end. With a masterful hand, Coulter will take you through the sinister secrets of small-town America and into the very center of the country's political power; from the base savagery of street gangs to the cutting-edge havoc that modern criminals commit with the stroke of a keyboard. Along the way, she explores the nature of power and the brutality that stems from it. Coulter deftly compares the drug-related violence that is truly a war in some cities with the questionable battles our politicians wage in D.C. and the violence in our personal lives that comes from compromising our principles. Only a writer as talented as Coulter could cover so much ground, while making the pages fly by the whole time.
As a prosecutor turned novelist, I'm picky about the crime fiction I read -- which is why Catherine Coulter is one of my favorite authors. Bombshell is yet another great novel from her. My one complaint is the book should come with a warning: Don't open this if you have any plans. Once you start, you won't be able to put it down.