Labyrinth

Review by Booklist Review

FBI Agent Lacey Sherlock is lucky to be alive after an SUV broadsides her Volvo, sending it spinning into traffic and ramming a fire hydrant. She escapes with bruises, a concussion, and amnesia so severe that she doesn't know her husband, FBI Agent Dillon Savich, or their young son, Sean. And the blood on her windshield isn't hers but rather that of a man running from something, who bounced off her car and disappeared. Two days later, the pair takes off to help Agent Griffin Hammersmith, who's vacationing in a small western Virginia town near where three teenage girls have recently gone missing; Griffin has landed in trouble with the local law after his gift of reading others' thoughts helps him rescue a kidnapped woman. Establishing Hammersmith's credentials and leaving him in charge of investigating the missing girls, Sherlock and Savich find the man who fled from her Sherlock's accident, who turns out to be a CIA analyst who stumbled onto something big. Coulter toggles between the two story lines, expertly raising the tension in each, as Sherlock's memory gradually returns. Prime summer reading by one of the most reliable authors in the genre.--Michele Leber Copyright 2010 Booklist

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.

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Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

Bestseller Coulter's high-speed 23rd FBI thriller (after 2018's Paradox) opens on a busy road in Washington, D.C., where an SUV rams into FBI agent Lacey Sherlock's car, causing her to spin out of control and hit a man, who subsequently disappears. Sherlock wakes up in the hospital with no memory of the accident, nor of her husband, fellow agent Dillon Savich. The FBI determines that the man she ran into was CIA analyst Justice Cummings. The search for Cummings uncovers chilling links to an international spy plot. Meanwhile, in tiny Gaffer's Ridge, Va., FBI agent Griffin Hammersmith rescues kidnapped journalist Carson Di Silva, who tells him that her abductor, Rafer Bodine, is also responsible for the disappearance of three teenagers, information she received through a psychic experience. The local sheriff, Rafer's uncle, declares him innocent and jails Hammersmith and Di Silva. In an attempt to help Sherlock regain her memory, Savich brings her to Gaffer's Ridge to investigate the abduction of the teens. Never mind the unlikely plot developments. Readers will cheer kick-butt Sherlock all the way to the action-packed finale. Agent: Robert Gottlieb, Trident Media Group. (July)

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

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Review by Kirkus Book Review

Coulter's treasured FBI agents take on two cases marked by danger and personal involvement.Dillon Savitch and his wife, Lacey Sherlock, have special abilities that have served them well in law enforcement (Paradox, 2018, etc.). But that doesn't prevent Sherlock's car from hitting a running man after having been struck by a speeding SUV that runs a red light. The runner, though clearly injured, continues on his way and disappears. Not so the SUV driver, a security engineer for the Bexholt Group, which has ties to government agencies. Sherlock's own concussion causes memory loss so severe that she doesn't recognize Savitch or remember their son, Sean. The whole incident seems more suspicious when a blood test from the splatter of the man Sherlock hit reveals that he's Justice Cummings, an analyst for the CIA. The agency's refusal to cooperate makes Savitch certain that Bexholt is involved in a deep-laid plot. Meanwhile, Special Agent Griffin Hammersmith is visiting friends who run a cafe in the touristy Virginia town of Gaffers Ridge. Hammersmith, who has psychic abilities, is taken aback when he hears in his mind a woman's cry for help. Reporter Carson DeSilva, who came to the area to interview a Nobel Prize winner, also has psychic abilities, and she overhears the thoughts of Rafer Bodine, a young man who has apparently kidnapped and possibly murdered three teenage girls. Unluckily, she blurts out her thoughts, and she's snatched and tied up in a cellar by Bodine. Bodine may be a killer, but he's also the nephew of the sheriff and the son of the local bigwig. So the sheriff arrests Hammersmith and refuses to accept his FBI credentials. Bodine's mother has psychic powers strong enough to kill, but she meets her match in Hammersmith, DeSilva, Savitch, and Sherlock.Greed, love, and extrasensory abilities combine in two middling mysteries. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

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Labyrinth 1 WASHINGTON, D.C. LATE AUGUST TUESDAY, LATE AFTERNOON Sherlock had the next hour planned out to the minute. A quick stop at Clyde's Market for mozzarella cheese for Dillon's lasagna and some Cheerios for Sean's breakfast tomorrow, then thirty minutes at the gym: fifteen minutes on the treadmill and some quick upper-body work, that is if she managed to avoid Tim Maynard, a newly divorced firefighter who kept putting the moves on her. She was bummed she couldn't be with Dillon at the gym as usual, sweating her eyebrows off, but she'd been tied up in a meeting about the Mason Springs, Ohio, middle school murders. She thought of Agent Lucy McKnight, who'd been in the meeting with her until she had to run out to throw up. Lucy was four months pregnant now, nearly over the heaves, she had announced when she'd returned to the meeting, and everyone had applauded. Sherlock, Shirley, the CAU secretary and commandant, and Agent Ruth Noble were giving Lucy a just-beyond first-trimester party this Friday evening at Shirley's condo. Not a baby shower, too early for that. Their gift to her would be two pairs of pants with elastic waists. Sherlock flashed back to her own pregnancy with Sean, how happy and terrified she'd been. Lucy had a good man in Agent Coop McKnight. What a wild ride the two of them had had before they'd hooked up. Sherlock had only enough time to jerk the wheel left, fast and hard, before the black SUV struck her passenger side. The impact hurled her Volvo into a parked sedan, and then spun her into the oncoming traffic. The world sped up, blurred into insanity. As if from a great distance, she heard horns honking, screaming metal, yells. Her Volvo struck the front fender of a truck, glanced off, hit a sedan trying to swerve out of her way, ricocheted off yet another swerving car. Her head slammed against the steering wheel an instant before the airbag exploded in her face. She heard a sharp thunk and saw only a flash of what looked like a body flying across the hood of the Volvo, and bouncing off her wildly spinning car. Her brain registered splattered blood on the windshield--she'd hit someone. He'd come out of nowhere. She looked at all the blood, so much blood. Hers? The person's she'd hit? The world turned round and round, a whirling kaleidoscope of colors and shapes, until they ended when the Volvo's rear end slammed into a fire hydrant. Her head was thrown violently forward into the bag and she was out. Excerpted from Labyrinth by Catherine Coulter All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.

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