From Publishers Weekly
Dark secrets that can destroy lives propel bestseller Coulter's solid 12th FBI thriller (after
Double Take). When a small plane carrying FBI Special Agent Jackson Jack Crowne makes a crash landing in mountainous Parlow, Ky., his friends FBI Special Agents Dillon Savitch and Lacey Sherlock fly by helicopter from Washington, D.C., to the scene. Jack survives the crash, aided by Rachael Abbott, a young woman who's returning to Parlow, her childhood home, after escaping an attempt to drown her in a Maryland lake. After Rachael reveals that she's the illegitimate daughter of the late Maryland senator John James Abbott, whose siblings she suspects are trying to kill her, the FBI agents agree to help. As further attempts on Rachael's life occur, the attraction grows between her and Jack. Despite a somewhat predictable plot, master of romantic suspense Coulter exposes the cost of obsessive regard for family honor and family shame with her usual flair.
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--This text refers to the
Hardcover
edition.
Product Description
FBI Special Agent Jackson Crowne is flying renowned psychiatrist Dr. Timothy MacLean back to Washington, D.C., to protect him and discover who’s trying to kill him. But they don’t make it. That same morning, agents Savich and Sherlock are told about Agent Crowne’s Mayday sent from deep in the Appalachian mountains near Parlow, Kentucky. Within thirty minutes, Savich and Sherlock are aboard an FBI helicopter, headed for Parlow. Agent Crowne barely manages to bring his Cessna down in the narrow Cudlow Valley and haul the unconscious Dr. MacLean from the burning wreckage before it explodes.
Their crash is witnessed by Rachael Abbott, a young woman who has just narrowly escaped drowning by assailants who drugged her, tied her to a cement block, and threw her into Black Rock Lake. When Savich and Sherlock arrive in Parlow, they discover Jack is down but not out, that Rachael saved his and Dr. MacLean’s lives, and that she’s hiding something big. To add to the complexity of the situation, Dr. MacLean has been diagnosed with frontal lobe dementia, a pernicious disease that makes the victim say whatever comes to mind with no regard to consequences. With a patient list of Washington’s elite movers and shakers, MacLean has almost certainly compromised doctor-patient confidentiality, and one of his patients, they presume, is out to shut him up. But which one, and why?