BLOW OUT by Catherine Coulter
In the past Catherine Coulter has proven herself to be a writer of good suspense stories but with her latest effort, BLOW OUT, she takes a step backwards. This tale of murder most foul has a solid plotline until the final moments of the book and then it falls apart. Coulter also gives us characters for whom solutions come almost too easily.
The plot starts off in the Poconos where FBI agents Sherlock and Savich are on vacation with their son Sean. One cold night Savich is driving back to their cabin when he has a blow out. While he is fixing it, a woman appears suddenly out of the night saying there has been an attempted murder. Savich tries to help her but the woman disappears.
Before he can make much headway on that event he and Sherlock are called back to Washington where a Supreme Court Justice has been murdered. It is a brutal murder involving a garrote. The nation is shocked because the act took place in the Supreme Court building at night, a setting that should have been totally protected.
The book concerns this murder as well as two subsequent related ones. Savich also is desperate to find out what happened to the woman who appeared on the road. Those are a lot of plot angles to keep juggled but Coulter does a good job of controlling them until the end. In the final pages she has the crimes solved too successfully and certain explanations of what occurred are either unbelievable or are glossed over.
The revelation of the killer and the effect this monster has had on some of the minor characters is ridiculous. Coulter goes for the cheap ending and the most unsatisfying one. She is too good a writer not to come up with a better resolution of her plot than this one.
It also should be noted that the characters of Sherlock and Savich are getting tiresome. They are cloying and uninteresting in this story, and the constant inclusion of their child in the plot is annoying. Coulter needs to find new characters on which to focus. She has done enough with these married and so in love FBI agents.
For the most part the book is fairly interesting. And that may be enough for die-hard Coulter fans. But for many it will not be. Readers want tight, interesting and believable plots. This time out this is not what Coulter delivers.
BLOW OUT is published by G P Putnam's Sons. It contains 400 pages and sells for $25.95.