Wonderful FBI crime thriller! Love Savich and Sherlock! ( )

I was SO EXCITED to finally read the book where Sherlock and Savich meet! Yay! And Sherlock taking Savich down in a training exercise? Too funny! This one is all lions and tigers and serial killers, oh my. Sherlock gets assigned to Savich’s criminal apprehension unit (and because this is an awesome backlist title from several decades ago, which makes this extra fun, computers are just now a thing and brand new in looking for criminals) where Dylan is basically the only one in the FBI using computer patterns to look for bad guys. They chemistry here is hot, constant banter and Sherlock defying her boss.

This one is one of Coulter’s best, but as a warning, it’s a bit gruesome… all serial killer tracking and one grisly murder after the next. Sherlock’s sister was killed years ago, and she’s determined to figure out who did it, and catch them. But do they have the right perp? And will tracking them down put Sherlock in further danger?

Please excuse typos/name misspellings. Entered on screen reader.
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The Maze
2 Stars

After reading and disliking the first book in this series, I decided not continue. However, I recently discovered a later installment in a box of second hand books and The Maze fit into my Bookshelf Bingo challenge, so I thought I'd give it another chance - big mistake!

The plot starts out well enough with an FBI recruit in search of the serial killer responsible for her sister's death but goes straight downhill from there. The story development is ridiculous and contrived, the writing and dialogue are atrocious and the characterization is just plain weird.

The heroine, Lacey Sherlock, is supposed to be a well-trained, intelligent FBI agent but her TSTL moments abound and the jokes about her name are tedious. The hero, Dillon Savich, is sexy and the romance and sexual tension are tantalizing but not enough to save the book from being a dud.

The secondary cast is moronic from the smarmy brother-in-law and his rabid new wife to the jealous ex-girlfriend and the pitifully clichéd villain - all are painfully one dimensional and add nothing to the story aside from a number of absurd and perhaps even comic situations that I doubt the author was striving for.

All in all, an unrealistic and poorly written attempt to cash in on the success of Thomas Harris's The Silence of the Lambs. If you want a riveting FBI focused book, read that one instead. ( )

Another great book by Catherine Coulter. I loved reading about how Sherlock and Savich got together!!! ( )

This review is in reference to the audio book version.

The Maze started out so well that I actually began to look forward to reading/listening to the other FBI books that Catherine Coulter has written. However, in part due to the narrator's sometimes sing-song voice, the prose began to grate on me as did the lack of specificity: "The dish was prepared very nicely."

The big flaw here is that the book seems to go on too long. There's a substantial amount of melodrama to go around as well as both the hero and heroine ending up injured numerous times. Also, you know how you always yell at the screen when the woman walks into a dark room, basement, etc. and you wonder how she could be that stupid? Well, our well-trained FBI agent does just that, totally unprepared and beyond incredible.

And, then there are some minor inconsistencies that should have been caught: Dillon's voice being a tenor and then being a baritone. There didn't seem to be any "real" connection between Dillon and Lacey.

After enjoying the initial build up and I do mean excitedly enjoying it because I thought I'd found a wonderful series much like the Stephanie Plum series, I felt let down and amazed how the novel continued to drone on when it should have ended chapters ago. Disappointing. ( )