DEADLOCK

3.5 stars out of 5


This series featuring really cool (and now married with a young son) FBI agents Dillon Savich and Lacey Sherlock is in second place when it comes to books from this author - I absolutely love her "Brit in the FBI" series co-written with J.T. Ellison. That said, I was excited to start this book - the 24th in the series. But sadly, it just doesn't measure up to the others I've read. The writing doesn't rise to the usual standard, the plot just didn't grab me and one of the characters I hope to never "see" again.

There's more than one story going on here, the first of which centers around Marsia Gay, who is in a correctional treatment facility in Washington, D.C. - and Savich is responsible for putting her there, so she's out to get him. She's also out to get another prisoner - a woman who has agreed to testify against her in an upcoming trial. Meanwhile, Rebekah, the young wife of a powerful U.S. Senator, visits a female medium named Zoltan, who claims Rebekah's late grandfather wants her to reveal a "secret" he passed on to her before he died. And, Savich is puzzled when he gets a red box containing part of a jigsaw that shows an unidentified pier cluttered with dead birds.

As fate (and the plot) would have it, FBI agent Pippa Cinelli, a financial expert who has been sent on a temporary basis to help Savich and Sherlock and their team, spots the puzzle. And wonder of wonders, she recognizes the scene as a pier in her home town (wow, what are the chances?) So, she's sent back, at first to work as an undercover agent, to see if she can find out who sent the puzzle and why. Ultimately, she connects with the local police chief, and the two begin a more in-depth investigation that's rife with potential danger.

Almost from the moment Pippa appeared, I suspected she was being groomed for a spin-off series; that feeling intensified when she was given the lion's share of page time. Actually, I hoped that would be the case; she struck me as childish and borderline silly - so if she got her own series, I could simply ignore it. Now that I've finished this book, I doubt that she'll be setting off on her own, so I'm hoping she'll be taking a background spot (the farther back the better) in the future. That police chief, on the other hand, is a totally engaging character, and I'm looking forward to seeing more of him.

Most of the main characters take turns at being the targets of the bad guys and gals, and there's a fair amount of action to hold readers' attention right up to the end as the pieces of all the puzzles come together. This certainly isn't my favorite of the series, but it's definitely worth reading. 

Deadlock by Catherine Coulter (Gallery Books, July 2020); 476 pp.