Blowout

Jove, 2005. Near Fine. The latest in prolific novelist Coulter's series of FBI thrillers once agai n features high-powered husband and wife team Dillon Savich and Lacey Sherl ock. In the middle of a long-awaited vacation with their young son, the two are called to investigate the heinous midnight murder of a Supreme Court J ustice, committed in the Court's library despite tight, round-the-clock sec urity. Known as a moderate, Justice Stewart Califano was undoubtedly contem plating an upcoming case involving the death penalty for psychopathic juven iles when he was brutally garroted, his fingers sliced off as he struggled to escape. The FBI is aided in the case by the CIA, Secret Service and metr opolitan police as well as by the judge's stepdaughter, an investigative re porter for the Washington Post. Yet within 48 hours, two of the Justice's y oung law clerks are murdered in the same grisly fashion--the lovable Daniel strangled with his own St. Christopher medal chain, and the formidable Eli za killed while she's on the phone with Savich. An unrelated supernatural s ide plot is distracting, and the case's solution comes from out of left fie ld, but fans of the author's fictional duo will get their fix--the climacti c face-off takes place in Savich and Sherlock's own living room.