Whiplash

FBI Thriller #14

by Catherine Coulter

An action-packed FBI thriller from #1 New York Times bestselling author Catherine Coulter!In Connecticut, the murder of a pharmaceutical bigwig brings in Savich and Sherlock, along with local Agent Bowie Richards and P.I. Erin Pulaski. Back in Washington, an important U.S. senator is terrorized by an unknown entity, and is calling for Savich’s special skills. When the Vice President is nearly killed, it’s clear these crimes are linked—and Savich and Sherlock must act fast to stop a killer...

Genres: Mystery, Fiction, Suspense, Thriller, Romance, Romantic Suspense, Crime

482 pages, Kindle Edition

First published June 15, 2010

Reviews

[Kat · Rating 4 out of 5]

In this Catherine Coulter thriller, a drug company that manufactures a cancer drug stops production, and has data stolen in a middle of the night break in by a do-gooder trying to see if their drug-stoppage is intentional. But when someone from the company is murdered the next day, she’s worried she’ll get implicated in the murder, not just the theft, especially when the FBI starts poking around. An interesting scenario!

In the other sequence, a senator is sure he’s being haunted by ghosts, and after people close to him start dying, is he imagining things, or is there really a threat? This one has lots of twists and turns you never see coming until the end!

Please excuse typos/name misspellings. Entered on screen reader.

[D. Martin · Rating 1 out of 5]

Like any avid reader, I'm always on the lookout for a new favorite author or series. To that end, I occasionally pick up a "chick lit" thriller in the hopes of being pleasantly surprised. But the truth is that I'm usually disappointed by poor character development, plot holes, and deus ex machina. Unfortunately, this book followed that trend of disappointment for me.

I should've known early. Let me set the stage for the many absurdities in this book. The female private investigator breaks into a building where a murder occurs later that night. The FBI knows a woman broke into the building, making our investigator the Number One Suspect. All she has to do is keep her identity a secret until she can find the real killer. But that becomes difficult because she works on the side as a ballet instructor and one of her students is the daughter of the FBI agent on the case. To make matters worse, the widower FBI agent wants the detective/ballerina to watch his daughter for a few days because he'll be working hard on the case and even though he's never met the ballet instructor, his daughter speaks very fondly of her, so it must be a good idea to pawn the little girl off on a stranger.

Seriously? The author couldn't come up with a more-plausible plot device to get the FBI in bed (figuratively and literally, of course) with the detective? What has he done with the daughter on every other case he's ever worked? He doesn't have any options other than someone he's never met? And why has he never met her if she's his daughter's teacher? Who drops the girl off at class?

Any fiction requires some suspension of disbelief from the reader, some genres more than others. But this book takes that to a new level. Chapter after chapter is filled with characters, events, and decisions that exist only because the author seemed too lazy to create some plausibility in the world she had created but needed a reason, no matter how ridiculous. to propel the plot.

I will continue to search for my new favorite author.

[Wendy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this one as I do most books by Catherine Coulter.

Even though this dealt with fairly heavy subject matter, and there were a couple of bloody spots, I would call this a 'light' read. The romance was next to non-existent, the suspense wasn't all that suspenseful (more of a shocked surprise feeling)... but I enjoyed it all the same. Love revisiting Savich and Sherlock.

I just wish that CC would go back to the way she wrote the beginnings of this series. The first in this series had much more romantic content. But to contradict my own self, I didn't miss the romance side of it until I finished the book.

Solid 4 stars for me (but I don't really know why LOL, just that I enjoyed it and it kept me reading)

[Lisa · Rating 2 out of 5]

This one is a weak 2.5 stars rounded down because it started out poorly and didn’t really get any better, but it did have more action at the end and that made it easier to finish. The plot was unbelievable in the beginning and the mystery unsatisfying at the end because the characters had too many leaps in logic that weren’t supported by anything the reader was shown. They either just magically knew the answer based on nothing but their “gut feeling” or they had actually secretly found out some information that the reader didn’t know about which is cheating. So all the big whodunit revelations felt totally unjustified. And the relationships between the boring characters were unbelievable too, with people who had only just met each other suddenly behaving as if they had some kind of deep abiding friendship and would go to the ends of the earth for each other. It was weird.



Okay so the book opens with a PI named Erin committing a felony by breaking into a pharmaceutical company CEO’s office. The pharma company makes a particular drug that is needed for cancer treatment, but suddenly that drug has become very scarce, forcing patients to switch to a much more expensive alternative made by a rival company. Erin’s been hired by the son of a cancer patient who thinks this sudden shortage is just a bit too coincidental. She’s already exhausted all of the legal means of investigation and has finally decided that B & E is her only option. Once in the CEO’s office, she spends about 2 minutes looking and miraculously stumbles across the exact smoking gun she needs. Meticulously spelled out notes on how the CEO is going to sabotage his own company’s productions and how much money it’ll translate to for the rival company. Even right down to the “spin” he’s going to use in the media to try to claim that it was all just bad luck and/or poor planning that led to the shortage. How convenient.

So Erin prints out this incriminating document and gets ready to head out but darn her bad luck, the CEO suddenly decides to use his office for a romantic tryst with one of his employees, on a Sunday night. Erin has to shimmy out the small second-floor window and run through the woods in order to make her escape as the police are called.

Next morning Erin is in her apartment looking over her stolen papers when she hears a news report saying that a dead body was found in those same woods and that the victim is an employee of the pharma company so they suspect it has something to do with the break-in. Now Erin is in a pickle because she/her client can’t just release the incriminating papers to the media as they’d planned. If they do, it’ll be traced back to them and then she’ll be the prime suspect in a murder. Next thing you know, there’s a knock on Erin’s door and it’s none other than the FBI agent in charge of the murder investigation that she just saw on TV, Bowie.

But it turns out Bowie isn’t there on business but for the absolutely ludicrous purpose of asking Erin, a woman he has supposedly never met before, to watch his 7-year-old daughter, Georgie. Sure, I totally believe this. Erin is at first terrified to see Bowie because she’s got the evidence of her B & E spread out all over her kitchen table. But then she decides that it might be handy to keep Bowie close and try to pump him for information about the case, so she agrees to watch the kid. Things get worse from there as Bowie doesn’t even bat an eye at Erin’s very obvious and pointed questions about his investigation and he proceeds to blab everything he knows. This is a guy we’re supposed to believe is exceptionally smart and a stellar agent. He’s achieved the position of special agent in charge by only the age of 30. And yet he’s a complete idiot.

Next we’re introduced to Sherlock and Savich, a married couple of FBI agents who are still allowed to act as each other’s partners, for some reason. This is the first book I’ve read from this series but I gather that Sherlock and Savich are the main characters. Savich is supposedly some kind of computer whiz who has named his laptop and uses it to glean clues from cyberspace. He’s also, apparently, able to commune with the dead, which was weird in this otherwise totally non-paranormal story. S & S have been called in by a Senator who has been seeing a ghostly apparition outside his window for weeks. S & S camp out in the backyard and, sure enough, they see the apparition. Savich then gets a “feeling” and knows it’s a supernatural occurrence.

The next day, he’s sitting at his desk and decides to try to make contact with the ghost, who he’s sure is the Senator’s 3-years-dead wife. This is a process that requires some concentration so you’d think he’d put a do not disturb sign on the door or something but he doesn’t. So he’s no sooner made contact with her and gotten her to utter some plot-conveniently vague words about how she “has to warn him because he’s in such danger and has no idea,” when someone barges into Savich’s office and breaks the connection. So Savich is convinced that the Senator is in grave danger but then he’s told to go down to the scene of the pharma murder, so he just shrugs and he and Sherlock leave without doing anything to protect the Senator, which I found very odd indeed.

Bowie is kind of disgruntled about having 2 more agents called in when of course he can totally handle things on his own, but after like 30 seconds of hokey conversation he decides S & S are A-OK and they’re suddenly best friends. They talk to the CEO and his lover and while Sherlock gets the woman to admit to the affair, not much else is learned. The CEO flatly denies that anything was stolen during the break-in and has conveniently disposed of his hard drive so no one from the FBI can search it. Savich finds out through 5 seconds of playing on his laptop that the dead guy was the pharma company’s “Mr. Fixit” who did whatever needed doing in order to keep the company running smoothly, whether that meant greasing a few palms or breaking a few arms. Savich also, again after a few seconds of internet searching, zeros in on the exact drug shortage that Erin was there investigating and pegs it as being relevant to the case, which is just like, WTF. S & S hypothesize that Mr. Fixit was there investigating this shortage. The CEO denies everything.

That night, Bowie decides to bring S & S to Erin’s house for dinner and the three agents proceed to openly discuss all the particulars of the case with the civilian stranger. Then idiot Erin proceeds to VERY OBVIOUSLY probe them for further information. She even reveals to Sherlock that her current PI job is investigating a drug shortage. I mean, come on! Why don’t you just come right out and say “I’M INVOLVED IN THIS!”? And yet, despite Sherlock supposedly being a super smart agent and her having literally JUST been talking about this very subject in the previous scene and hypothesizing that the break-in was related to this drug shortage. AND having JUST gotten finished taking the statement of an eyewitness who saw the thief escaping from the pharma building and provided Erin’s exact description, she still doesn’t make the connection that Erin could possibly be the thief. Are you freaking kidding me right now?

Instead, Sherlock decides to invite Erin to go with her when she interviews the CEO’s wife, which I’m pretty sure isn’t allowed in an FBI investigation. But, anyway, the wife says that she knew her husband was cheating and didn’t care because he was rich and kept her in a 9000 sq ft house where she could freely take “tennis lessons” from a different 24-year-old stud every week. Sherlock, for basically no reason, gets a gut feeling that the wife still knows something so she decides to lie and say that the wife could be in danger.

Back at the police station we’re informed that the Germany-based pharma company has arranged for some German policeman to come and “assist” with the case. Bowie sends one of his deputies to pick the guy up at the airport. Then the CEO is brought in again for questioning, along with his company-supplied lawyers. Bowie, Sherlock and Savich all take turns hammering on the CEO and predicting all sorts of dire consequences for him. They’ve got him ready to confess everything when the German cop bursts in and breaks up the moment. This gives the lawyers time to hustle the CEO out the door before he can say anything incriminating. The American’s are all super pissed but the German claims he had no idea what he was walking in on and gets very pissy when they don’t just accept his apology and move on. He then does everything he can to turn the investigation away from anything to do with the company or conspiracies. He suggests that the death was merely a “mugging gone wrong” seeing as how the US is such a dangerous place, etc..

The next day, Erin is driving and realizes she’s being followed. Instinct tells her to jump out of the car and she avoids being blown up by mere seconds. The car is totally demolished and Erin is struck in the back by flying debris, leaving her with second-degree burns. Bowie, S & S all rush to Erin’s side at the hospital as if they’re all such close friends now that they’d be devastated if she died, even though they only shared one meal together. Sherlock also none-too-subtly hints that she’s finally figured out that Erin was the thief all along, but she doesn’t reveal this to Bowie. Instead she says that she wants Erin to confess herself, and when she’s not doped up on morphine. The German cop shows up to ask why 3 FBI agents are hanging around this random ballet teacher’s bedside when they’ve got a murder to solve but they brush him off.

Erin is soon discharged and the four of them go back to her apartment for confession time. Bowie is completely flabbergasted to learn that she was the thief. He’d had absolutely no idea. And then he rails at Erin for “betraying” him and S & S, even though they’ve literally only known each other for three days and she committed this felony before meeting him. Nope, his feewings are hurt…..but he doesn’t take his daughter out of this known criminal’s care. Um, seriously dude? Not to mention that Erin was responsible for picking his daughter up from school and someone had just firebombed her freaking car! What if that had happened when Georgie was in the back seat? But no, none of that occurs to our hero. He’s just mad that she lied to him. And none of the agents even consider arresting Erin for this confessed crime.

We flash back to the Senator’s story and he’s having lunch with an old acquaintance of his dead wife. The woman ends up collapsing during the lunch and dying of arsenic poisoning. She was eating the dish that the Senator has ordered every week for the last decade but that day had decided to go for something else. Savich flies back to investigate and quickly concludes that this was an attempt on the Senator’s life and the poor woman just had the bad luck to eat the dish instead.

Back with the murder investigation, Bowie is still pissed at Erin but has decided that he needs to keep her with him at all times in order to protect her. So she goes to the police station with him and sits in on an interview with 2 German high-ups from the pharma company. The German cop has some pointed questions about why Erin is there but no one tells him. The high-ups don’t have much to say and basically deny any and all wrongdoing on the part of the company.

A scene change later, we see the high-ups and their lawyers along with the CEO. We’re in the CEO’s POV for the scene and we get treated to a description of one of the high-up as being a short, fussy little man who wears 2 inch lifts in his shoes to try to seem taller. He also has a new 26 year old wife, younger than his youngest son. The CEO is sweating bullets and lying through his teeth about what he’s done with the drug shortage but he knows they’re not buying it and he’s being set up to either take the fall and go to jail, or to be “disappeared.” So when they stop at a roadside rest stop, he jumps out the window and runs off into the woods.

That night Sherlock gets a call from the CEO’s wife claiming that there are intruders in her house and she’s scared. S & S go tearing over there and end up getting shot at by an unseen gunman who escapes. They find the wife in the closet and unhurt but find the CEO dead. Bowie, who has been sleeping on Erin’s couch since her confession, gets a call in the middle of the night to come to the crime scene. Erin overhears and decides that she HAS to be there for some vague and undefined reason. So after Bowie leaves, she picks up his sleeping daughter, carries her to the rental car, and drives to the scene of the homicide. Once there, Bowie is pissed at her for coming, but not because of the terrible lack of judgement she’s used by bringing his innocent daughter into this ugliness, or for putting her in incredible danger by driving her around when the last car Erin was in got blown up, but because Erin is still weak from her injuries and he doesn’t want her over exerting herself. (Eye Roll)

The next day they get word that there’s been a terrible car accident. The Vice President was nearly killed, but he was driving the Senator’s car. So again, it looks like this was an attempt on the Senator’s life and someone else was just unlucky enough to get caught in the cross-fire. Savich again goes back to investigate.

Back with the murder, Sherlock decides to go question the CEO’s wife. The wife isn’t at home so Sherlock plays a hunch and goes to the tennis instructor boy-toy’s house. For no real reason, other than her gut feeling, she keeps poking at them, insinuating that she knows more than they’re revealing, until the boy toy panics and knocks her out. She comes-to quickly and hears the pair arguing and panicking about what they’ll do now. They intend to tie her up so Sherlock pretends she’s just coming around and that she thinks she fainted from low blood sugar. She asks for some juice and the wife takes a suspiciously long time bringing it, but super-smart Sherlock doesn’t notice. She drinks half the juice, then makes like she’s going to leave and the pair, apparently believing that she has no memory of their incriminating acts, are allowing her to go. But instead of getting out to the safety of her car and calling for backup since she’s still woozy from her concussion, Sherlock decides to whip out her gun and try to arrest them on her own. She fumbles to call Bowie while keeping a gun on them but naturally, there were pills crushed up in the juice she drank and she ends up passing out again.

She wakes up in a playhouse prop room and uses a prop knife to cut off her duct tape bindings. She also has an ankle holster gun that the two amateurs didn’t find. She pulls it and hides among the costumes just as the door opens and it’s the German cop. At first he pretends that he’s there to rescue her, that he has the wife and Boy Toy in custody, but right after he says that the wife walks in. They have a ridiculously long argument that serves as an info-dump for the audience to help connect the dots. It was the German cop who killed the CEO and the wife was in on it because of money.

Boy Toy comes in and German cop shoots him in the head with Sherlock’s regular gun because he’s trying to set things up to look like Boy Toy, Sherlock and the wife all killed each other in a shootout so all the loose ends will be tied up. Then German cop starts choking the wife. Sherlock uses one of her two bullets to shoot him in the neck, but it’s not enough to put him down. Then we flash back to Bowie trying to figure out what’s happened to Sherlock. Her call to him had connected before she passed out so he knew she was in trouble but didn’t know where to look. He takes Erin with him to Boy Toy’s apartment when they finally trace the cell’s signal and Erin figures out that they’ve taken Sherlock to the playhouse based solely on a framed certificate hung on the wall…sure.

Back in the prop room, German cop monologues about his dastardly deeds and Sherlock eggs him on to try to make him mad enough to give her a good shot with her last remaining bullet. Bowie eventually bursts in and shoots German cop, but doesn’t kill him. Sherlock then picks up her regular gun, puts in a new clip, and walks off the scene with it, which totally couldn’t happen when her gun was just used to murder a guy and would therefore be needed as evidence. She calls Savich to inform him that she’s fine so he doesn’t bother to continue his frantic race down to see her. He instead turns back around to continue the Senator investigation.

Next thing we know, he’s meeting with the Senator and just suddenly accuses him of being behind the murder of the woman and the attempted murder of the vice president. Savich doesn’t have any actual proof of this, and absolutely nothing that the audience has been shown backs up his accusations, but he makes them anyway and just swears that some way, somehow, he’ll get the goods on the Senator. The Senator smoothly denies everything and promises to have Savich transferred to Alaska in short order

Savich flies back to join Bowie, Sherlock and Erin as they confront the two German high-ups. Here Savich pulls out all this information that the reader was never shown, phone records, wire transfers, etc. that prove that the guy who wears the 2-inch lifts was in cahoots with the German cop to set all this up. He colluded with the head of a rival company to remove his company’s drug from the circulation so the other guy’s more expensive drug would corner the market in exchange for a personal payoff. Then Savich whips out a photo of the guy’s hot young wife and reveals that she’d honey-trapped him. She was actually working for the other drug company all along. She targeted him, got him to marry her, then started spending all his money at such an alarming rate that it would make him desperate enough to do something like this. But it was all an act and she’s been banging a guy her own age the whole time. 2-inch lifts guy bawls his eyes out in the interview and the other German calls him pathetic.

Then we flash to the vice president’s hospital room. The Senator goes in to see him and since they’ve been friends for decades the Secret Service leaves them alone. The Senator immediately starts monologuing about how he’s always hated the VP. Apparently his dead wife and the VP had an affair early in their respective marriages. The Senator had known, but pretended otherwise, all the while harboring this hatred for the VP. But on her deathbed, the wife had finally confessed that their first born son was actually the VP’s, not the Senator’s. That made him angry enough that he started plotting the VP’s downfall. When his wife’s ghost appeared and told Savich that “he” was in danger, it gave him the perfect opportunity to attack the VP but make it look like he himself had been the intended victim. He tells the VP that he’s planning to kill himself and taunts him that he can’t tell anyone the truth because all it will do is wreck his family’s reputation since the Senator will be dead and free from consequences. Then he leaves and Sherlock pops out of the bathroom having heard and recorded the whole thing. She also confiscates the glass of water the Senator had tried to get the VP to drink earlier and of course it was poisoned. The Senator is arrested off-page. It was a weak ending because if the Senator hadn’t confessed, he would have gotten away scot-free.

The book closes out with Erin and Bowie embarking on a relationship (they swept her B&E crime under the rug) and good friends with S & S.



Like I said, it was an unsatisfying end because the bad guys were either really obvious or the twists were based on information the reader wasn’t privy to. I’m not sure I’ll read another one from this series.

[Joanne · Rating 2 out of 5]

I eagerly await Savich/Shewlock novels from Catherine Coulter, but Whiplash was a disappointment. I have felt that the last few offerings in the series (this is #14) have been going downhill and getting a little unbelievable. Sean now has supernatural capabilities. This book started off with a break in at a U.S. office of a global pharmaceutical company. While the culprit is listening to the morning news, she learns that a mutilated body was found in the woods the same night - the woods that were her escapre. Quite predictably, the investigating FBI agent (the woods were federal property) is her soon to be lover. Randomly, Coulter takes us to Washington - enter Savich and Sherlock. The book tries to keep the two story lines afloat, but fails at both. Both plots are so transparent. I again find myself shaking my head at these successful authors. They have betrayed the mighty pen and thier craft to mass produce drivel. I am very disappointed because Savich and Sherlock used to deliver good dialog, action, humor, and suspense. Now, we they are just the best, brightest, most talented; they can do anything and be a successful couple. And they always invetigate something that unveils a love as stronga and wonderful as theirs. Please, Ms. Coulter, don't give us more of the same in your next offering.

[HJ · Rating 2 out of 5]

Received a free copy via First Reads giveaway.

Sigh. Where to start?

Okay, positives. Though it started a bit slow, in the long run, the book kept me reading until the end. Well, maybe that was because I felt obligated to finish it so I could give an honest review.

Yeah.

I knew going in (and having read some of the other reviews) that this was not really a romantic suspense. What I didn't realize was that not only wasn't it a romance (at all), it also wasn't much of a suspense, either. Oh wait, the cover of the book says FBI Thriller. Really?

I'm not in the FBI, but I can't imagine that the author's knowledge of the FBI's policies and procedures is much more (or less) than mine. Three agents simply decide to start sharing info with a self-proclaimed Private Investigator? Seriously? The lack of real research was glaringly obvious.

And the storytelling just seemed so flat to me. There were far too many characters, and far too much telling, not showing. None of the characters came to life for me. Other than their physical descriptions, their personalities were some of the most cardboard I've read in a long time.

I'll admit, it's been awhile since I've read a Catherine Coulter book, and despite the fact that I used to truly enjoy her books, if this book is any indication of her current work, then I may need to pass on future endeavors.

[Carolyn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Re-read.

My original review still stands: I have said it before and I will say it again. I LOVE Catherine Coulter's FBI Series!!!!! As always, her dialogue is quick, crisp and very smart. My favorite two main characters in her FBI series, Sherlock and Savich, make more than just an obligatory visit in this book which makes me a very happy camper. And, as always, the mysteries involved (for there are two) are riveting. I am, once again, surprised at the outcome and the unraveling of the two mysteries. Another goodie.

[Sandy · Rating 1 out of 5]

There’s a reason why I’m not into chick lit and there’s a reason why I choose to read them once in a blue moon. Whiplash didn’t provide me any reason to change my views on the lot.

I had a thorough laugh throughout the book. It’s so gullible and absurd, from the beginning I knew I’m just gonna stick to the fact that this book is gonna leave me light. In my opinion the book is written without any logic whatsoever. If FBI is full of agents like the ones in this book, well, bless The US of A.

It’s a soup, a murder, a conspiracy, even a ghost story, oh and extramarital affairs too. A very loose plot without anything interesting. A 350 pages too long drama. The choice of names, places, wow, so original. Sherlock, Norman Bates, she even twisted Andreas Kisser with an additional couple of letters. That, I didn’t like at all. Ultra fast read cos it was fun, fun to see how ignorant everything was.

Still I don’t regret the decision I made to read it. It’s healthy to do some mindless reading once in a while.

Book 69 of 2020

[Sandy Schmidt · Rating 4 out of 5]

At the request of a family friend, a professor at Yale, Erin Polaski investigates a pharmaceutical company who claims unavoidable circumstances have led to the reduction in production of an inexpensive drug used to treat cancer. Erin breaks into the office of the CEO, Caskie Royal, and download information that proves this is a planned move for profits - forcing patients to switch to a more expensive medication. Meanwhile, shortly after Erin's break-in, Bowie Richards, FBI, has been called in by the Police Chief to investigate the death of a man found in the federal park behind the pharmaceutical company. Shortly after seeing the news about the death and fearing she would be implicated because she was escaping out the bathroom window around that time, there is a knock on Erin's door. "Who is it?" "Bowie Richards." Erin can't let him in because she has all the purloined papers spread around her appointment and was sure she'd be arrested. The visit, however, was for a different matter. In another part of the country, Sherlock and Savich are called upon to see Senator David Hoffman because he was experiencing bizarre apparitions and Savich is known for his psychic experiences. While trying to make sense of this case, Savich and Sherlock are brought into the Van Vie Park murder. A great story interweaving three seemingly separate events (4 if you want to separate out the Bowie-Erin story).

[Toni · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5 stars

This book was just okay for me. I thought it was a bit overly complex. I didn't really feel the connection between Savich and Sherlock like I have in other books. It felt really cold in that effect. Plus the whole story started off as if another character was the main POV and I think that threw me off as well.

Not a fan of this book. But I love Catherine Coulter's writing and I will definitely pick up other books in this series. Not every book is going to hit it out of the park for someone. It was probably just the wrong time in my life to read this. I needed more fluff and less of the intense espionage FBI stuff.

But don't take my word for it. I am reading a used hardback that has written on the inside cover "great read." Check this book out and decide for yourself.

[Margaret Yelton · Rating 3 out of 5]

This one wasn't up to the standards of what I had come to expect from this series of book.

[Ozetta Goodwin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Series featuring Savich, and Sherlock FBI agents

I missed a few in this series but each book is good on its own. I enjoy this couple and the writing of Catherine Coulter. I've never been disappointed in her stories.

[Nikki DiIenno · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a long book, around 450 pages, but read easily so it did not take long. In the beginning, it was a little predictable, following similar tropes most books in this genre do. However, I do have to admit, at the end there were many twists I was not expecting. The story follows two separate storylines and crimes to be solved, interwoven by the four main characters (Erin, Bowie, Savich, and Sherlock). I didn’t love Savich and Sherlock (couldn’t tell you why) and I most definitely did not like that Savich could communicate with dead people. It was a complex and interesting plot, about corrupt drug corporations and death threats on Senators. The one thing it lacked for me was it was not as spicy as I hoped and thought Coulter would be.

[Linda · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good read-what a tangled wel was wovwn in this fast read interesting book

[Steven Mitchell · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked this read a lot. There are a number of interesting plots, all going on at the same time. It's an enjoyable, quick read.

[Mark · Rating 3 out of 5]

“Whiplash,” another installment in the Catherine Coulter “FBI Thriller” series, has me hooked. It’s like those soap operas that dominated college campuses during the 70s—you care about the characters, even if the plot is a bit convoluted. In “Whiplash,” Savich and Sherlock are entangled in investigations involving “Big Pharma” shenanigans and some “woo woo” threats to a prominent Senator. It’s just okay, but it’s entertaining nonetheless.

[Barbara Rogers · Rating 4 out of 5]

Barbara’s rating: 4 of 5 Stars
Series: FBI Thriller #14
Publication Date: 6/15/2010
Period: Contemporary
Number of Pages: 482

I thought I had read all of the books in this series, but I found I’d missed this one. How did I do that? At the moment, the series is up to book #26. So, of course, I immediately had to read the book I’d missed. It was nice to see that the author used Savich’s sixth sense in this book because she’d gotten away from that in the later books. I didn’t realize I’d missed it until it made an appearance. I must mention that I love this series, but you should be prepared (as always) for giant leaps toward the solution of the cases. The FBI agents just have these ‘hunches’ or ‘intuitions’ or they must get information behind the scenes that we are not privy to – at any rate, you’ll get giant leaps toward the solution and you’ll wonder – wait – where did that come from. Even with that, I still love the series and want to read each and every book.

As is the standard in this series, we have two mysteries that are being worked on simultaneously. To me, the main case is the case in Connecticut where Special Agent in Charge of the New Haven field office, Bowie Richards, gets a case where a murdered man is found in Van Wie Park – which is federal land. On the same night as the body is found, there is a break-in at the corporate offices of the Schiffer Hartwin Pharmaceutical company that abuts the park. When the victim is identified as Helmut Blauvelt, an employee of that company, it is assumed there is an association between the two crimes.

The second case has to do with the ‘haunting’ of Senator David Hoffman. While Hoffman doesn’t believe it is an apparition, he is spooked and wants to know what it is and who is behind it. When he calls the director of the FBI to ask for assistance, Agent Savich is assigned to the case. When someone is actually murdered and then the vice-president is almost killed – all while eating or using things only Hoffman would normally have been using, Savich believes there is truly a threat to Hoffman. Now, to figure it out. Who would want to harm Hoffman? The trail to the solution is convoluted and surprising.

In the Connecticut case, both Sherlock and Savich are assigned to help Bowie however they can. While Bowie isn’t happy about the ‘help’, he shows his professionalism by welcoming them and folding them right into his investigation. The scenario could be pulled directly from some of today’s headlines. A multi-national pharmaceutical company seems to be cutting production of a vital drug in the treatment of colon cancer. Without that drug, those diagnosed with colon cancer have to switch to a very costly medication that isn’t covered by insurance. Whoever broke into the US headquarters of the pharmaceutical company managed to get documentation of the company’s wrongdoing.

Danger flirts with all of those involved in the cases and more dead bodies appear. The Connecticut case is much faster-paced and more exciting than the Senator’s case, but both are interesting and you have to wonder how many people are involved and will the agents actually get to the bottom of it. Will the pharmaceutical company get away with just a few fines as is the standard or will they actually pay for all they’ve done? You’ll just have to read the book to get to the bottom of those questions.

I listened to the book in audiobook format and thoroughly enjoyed the narrators – Paul Costanzo and Renee Raudman. It was nice to have two narrators – one for the female characters and one for the male. They nicely displayed different voices for each of the characters, and they also conveyed the appropriate emotions as well. The story experience was nicely enhanced by their narration.

I enjoyed the story and I am so glad I went back and read this one. It is a good story, and I enjoyed all of the characters and mysteries. I hope you’ll enjoy it as much as I did.

[Debbie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Feeling she had few options, Erin Pulaski committed the crime of breaking and entering the offices of the pharmaceutical company that had been denying her client access to lifesaving drugs for his father. As a private investigator, Erin knew the risks but her father had trained her well and she accessed the files needed and escaped. Finding out that a man had been brutally murdered and left for dead near the same area at around the same time she had been there meant that she could be the best suspect the police, or in this case FBI Special Agent Bowie Richards would have, if they knew she was the one that broke in. Opening the door to Agent Richards stopped her cold, only to find out that he was not only the agent in charge of the murder investigation, but the father of one of her dance students that she taught on the side. Bouncing from one delicate case to another, Special Agent Dillon Savich and his wife Special Agent Lacey Sherlock had just finished witnessing some strange happenings at a senators residence when they were brought in to help Bowie, whether he wanted the extra help or not.

Book 14 ….. As always it is wonderful to see Savich and Sherlock working together and with others. I enjoyed the added bonus of seeing Dane, Ruth and some of the others from previous books. As much as I like Savich’s new abilities, in this book, it was more of a distraction. While the senator’s story line was interesting and added a link with Bowie it was (in my opinion) not necessary to the book. I would have rather seen more of the Erin / Bowie relationship. Usual S&S’s style is to get another couple together, but for this one it was a very, very mild romance if you could even call it that. I really wanted more of the romance end, S&S didn’t even give too much of a show in that category. A bit of a disappointment on the Romantic - suspense genre, but a solid Suspense novel anyways.

[William Bentrim · Rating 5 out of 5]

Whiplash by Catherine Coulter

Coulter is at her best in this book. A complicated, convoluted plot with intense action and lots of mystery characterize the story. New characters provide fresh input even though Savich and Sherlock have personality to spare. Conscience free drug companies and political intrigue round out this captivating story.

Coulter writes a good mystery and keeps one captivated and entertained through out the story. Dillon Savich and his wife Lacey Sherlock are once again in the thick of things. Coulter appears to use them as the glue to tie her books together. Erin and Bowie could carry the story line in a stand alone, separate novel. Savich and Sherlock’s interaction with each other and Erin and Bowie is fun to read. Perhaps more than many of Coulter’s book which often are not intended to exercise your intellect or provide you with insights into your life, this book forces you to contemplate the ethics of the corporate world. There are murders, assaults, psychotics, psychic powers, fires, bombs, shootings, history and love stories in this book. In other words, there is something for everyone. I have enjoyed other Coulter books and I enjoyed this one.

I highly recommend it.

[Jessi · Rating 3 out of 5]

No romance in this one. Seriously, the more Coulter writes in this series, the more it goes toward the paranormal and less the action/romance series that made it so good. I'll probably keep reading it but I'm getting close to giving up on it.
Private investigate Erin Pulaski snuck into a secured area to prove that the drug company Schiffer Hartwin was purposefully sabotaging their own factories so that a cheap cancer medication would have to be replaced by one still under patent which is much more expensive and has worse side effects. Unfortunately, she's almost caught by the CEO and his mistress.
Unfortunately, the drug company's "fixer" is found dead and the FBI suspects that the thief may be the murderer. Major twist? Erin is asked by the lead FBI investigator to watch his daughter because she's the daughter's ballet teacher?
Some majorly good ideas but none that are well developed. Too many ideas, too much back story not enough learning about the new characters. Richard Bowie (the FBI lead) has a girlfriend, there is no romantic plot only some hints about attraction but at the very end of the book she's meeting his mother? And having Dillon being acknowledged to talk to ghosts? And Sherlock believes it? These are not the characters that started the series.

[Barbara ★ · Rating 4 out of 5]

As usual I enjoyed this FBI thriller from Catherine Coulter. I really like her hero (Savich) and heroine (Sherlock, yup that's her real name). They make an excellent (and clean) team with different abilities that mesh well together. There isn't usually much romance or sex and the violence isn't gratuitous. I was listening to the audio book and the German names got rather confusing but I'm sure that was just an auditory thing.

This particular story was two-fold, in Washington DC, a senator is being haunted by his dead wife and Sherlock and Savich are asked to investigate. While in Connecticut, a break-in at Schiffer Hartwin Pharmaceuticals and a brutal murder in an adjacent park, bring the local FBI agent, Bowie Richards into the mix. Of course, there are international connections so Sherlock and Savich are asked to help out.

This was a simple mystery (well two actually). One I figured out early on and the other became clear very quickly. I did think it interesting that neither Sherlock nor Savich picked up on the German agent's bizarre behavior. All in all, a great addition to the series.

[Marcia Ferguson · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was my first Catherine Coulter, but it won't be my last. Sherlock and Savich are intriguing as a couple, that's for sure. This story had some romance, mystery, thriller aspects, and a touch of mystical, and it was a page-turner.

My frustrations would be that I got a bit lost at the end of the book, as the threads were getting tied up. Might have been my fault, but the explanation seemed a bit wordy and complicated, when the (spoiler) German agent was in the warehouse.

I usually like to determine the source of a book's title, and I must say, this one is a 'mystery' to me. I'd love to see what I missed, and it's totally possible other readers easily see the connection. As it stands, I think the reader gets whiplash going between the two stories, but that's a good thing, honest. I like the dual story lines. But, I suspect Catherine Coulter had another reason for choosing the title.

Fun book to get lost in, and now I need to backtrack and see how Savich and Sherlock met and fell in love ...

[Anna McFadden · Rating 5 out of 5]

when Dr. Edward Kendera's father's, who is going through chemotherapy, critical accompanying drug runs out he hires long time family friend P.I. Erin Pulaski to find proof of company wrong doing, back in Maryland F.B.I. agents Lacey Sherlock and Dillon Savich are investigating an unusual case. Senator David Hoffman is experiencing a ghostly apparition with possible malicious intent. after witnessing the disturbing specter they are no closer to figuring it out when they get a call from Connecticut. a top foreign Schiffer Hartwin employee has been found behind the company's American jeadquaters dead on federal land the FBI is call in and Savich and Sherlock is sent to help Bowie Edwards out in solving the case only to find out that their case and Erin's case are tied together.

[Jackie · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is a fast paced, easy to get drawn into suspense thriller that I totally felt comfortable with even though it is #14 in a series have only read a few books for. Dillon Savich and Lacy Sherlock are truly wonderful characters, as a husband wife team or solely as FBI agents they are compelling and personable.

The way in which the plot lines fit together to reveal the what and why was brilliant as were all the side avenues explored with bits and pieces of scenes with secondary characters. Especially loved every interaction with young Georgie Richards, she is a precious precocious young lady!

[Donna in Southern Maryland · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book delivered exactly what I expected and needed: a little mystery, a little romance, some psychic parts, a mystery bad guy, and an update on our 2 favorite FBI people, Sherlock and Savich. Readers of the series won't be disappointed; it's more of the what we've come to enjoy in the series.

[LG · Rating 1 out of 5]

So bad it becomes funny and then boring.

[Maura · Rating 3 out of 5]

Erin Pulaski, P.I. and part-time ballet teacher, breaks into the offices of Schiffer Hartwen and steals some papers implicating them in an intentional drug shortage. She only barely gets away without getting caught. But the next morning, she sees that a man was killed outside the building on federal lands and that makes her start to worry. That same day, special agent Bowie Richards arrives on her doorstep and asks her to look after his daughter, her ballet student, while he works the case of the dead man. She reluctantly agrees, which turns her house into FBI central and puts Savich and Sherlock in her immediate vicinity. Sherlock suspects Erin of something, but is waiting for the truth to be revealed as they investigate this dead man, which soon turns into another murder as one of their top suspects ends up murdered. Meanwhile, back in Washington, Savich is heading back and forth to investigate the apparent attempted murder of a Senator, which turns out to be more than it seems.

Just like the others in this series, this has entertainment value, as it does keep me engaged while I'm listening (got it on CD from my library and listen to it in my car for my commute) and I don't ever find myself wandering off in my mind while it's playing. The plot does clip along nicely and there are plenty of action-like moments and some suspense to where I maybe sat in my car a few minutes more just to see what happens. That being said, this isn't a stellar story or anything. I do still find myself rolling my eyes at some of the cheesy dialogue and occasionally thonking my head on the steering wheel at the stupidity of the investigators. Oh, and there's the odd disbelieving scoff as someone makes a wild leap and arrives at the correct conclusion with absolutely no evidence to support it. All of these happen throughout the story. Savich automatically knows who the Washington culprit is (although he did some off-page investigating and the reader didn't know that...). Savich and Sherlock immediately guess the importance of the drug shortage and pretty much figure out everything that's in the papers Erin stole without ever having looked at them. Sherlock does a dumbass thing and confronts two witnesses (who she suspects to actually be criminals) all on her own. Then, after they attempt to hurt her she attempts to arrest them on her own instead of getting out of there and calling for back up. Dumb. Dumb. Dumb. Dumb.

Then there's the odd quasi-romance between Bowie and Erin which isn't really, but maybe is? They seem to establish a friendship of sorts, he gets made when she endangers herself but also thinks he has to put some distance in there when he sees how she mothers his little girl...then in the epilogue, he comes back from the store with a grin on his face and she wonders what he picked up. What did he get? Condoms? A wedding ring? A ham sandwich? Maybe if it was supposed to be part of their romance the author could have more strongly suggested a romance between them. That whole relationship was just understated and vague.

[Janet Morgan · Rating 5 out of 5]

In this excellent 14th entry into the world of the FBI's Savich/Sherlock suspense novels, we are in for a special treat.
In this book, married special agents Dillon Savich and Lacey Sherlock share the stage with a couple of newcomers. The book actually opens with private investigator Erin Pulaski breaking into a big pharma CEO's office in Connecticut. The company is ripping off cancer patients and Erin's client wants them exposed.
Before she can do anything about it, however, local FBI agent Bowie Richards arrives at her door. It turns out that he only wants her to do him a favor involving his daughter. Erin's day job is teaching ballet and one of her favorite students is Bowie's daughter. To complicate Erin's life, murder soon arrives in the guise of a fix-it man from the pharmaceutical company's overseas arm. When this stranger dies near where Erin committed her break-in, Erin gets wrapped up in the FBI investigation.
Meanwhile, Savich and Sherlock are doing a favor to a friend who is being haunted. While they attempt to find out who is trying to drive their friend crazy, they are also sent to Connecticut to lead the aforementioned investigation with Bowie.
Everyone's lives become entangled in foreign intrigue while they try to unravel two fascinating cases.
Great book.
Read it and learn, as I just did, that Dillon Savich also has a paranormal talent. It is time for this reader to back up and read the earlier books to discover how Savich's unusual talent was discovered in this fantastic series.

[Dan · Rating 3 out of 5]

In the early 2000s I remembered reading and greatly enjoying the first three or four of Catherine Coulter's FBI thriller series. Okay, some of the plots were a bit outlandish and the supernatural was taken more seriously by the author than I take it. But overall I found them enjoyable, light reads. In my local library last April or May I saw a lot of this series on the shelf available for checkout. I don't remember how far I had reached in the series, but I knew that checking out the 14th I would be safe from getting halfway through before discovering I was rereading.

Have my tastes matured too much in the intervening twenty years? This story was hard to get into and then hard to get through. I put the book down for weeks, then read forty pages, then put the book down again. All in all, it took me four months to get through this less than exciting plot. There was a supernatural element still. The reader is expected to accept the premise that the dead actually speak to the living. There were conveniences in the plotting, like the person who committed a crime becoming a babysitter for the lead investigator of said crime.

The ending was the best part of the book. The author finally brought all the loose, disparate threads together into a cohesive whole that logically stuck together. Those who demand less of their fiction will be more pleased with this novel than I was. I wonder if I will ever read another in this series.

[Chris Cary Harder · Rating 4 out of 5]

First read of Catherine Coulter ….and I liked the drama that built up from from the break-in by a private investigator of a giant Pharmaceutical manufacturer company…. to find out the truth behind the sudden extreme shortages of a cancer saving drug. Soon we are in the midst of the personal lives of the young female investigator/part time ballet instructor, and three FBI agents.

The handsome & rugged single FBI agent Bowie coincidentally becomes intertwined with the private investigator Erin , as his precious 9yr old daughter is a student at her ballet class. And when a brutal murder of a German consultant is discovered near the “Big-Pharma” company, and the body ends up on Federal land a married FBI COUPLE is called into assist.

The other case that the married FBI team is involved with takes us to a bizarre ghost apparition of a distinguished US Senator , and Savich & Sherlock work both cases …one in DC and the other In Connecticut ….both resulting in intimate and startling details of the agents families and those of the ones they are investigating. And of course the ghost scene turns into a DC murder mystery, and the drug company episode turns into multiple murders and intrigue from Germany, Spain , France & back to US greed, affairs and more.