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

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)

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.