Customer Reviews

Whiplash: An FBI Thriller

5 star:		(20)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(7)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

In the beginning of this story, private investigator and part-time ballet instructor Erin Pulaski is breaking into the Schiffer Hartwin Parmaceutical company's CEO's office. All is going well so far. Her client who is a professor at Yale has a father with colon cancer and there's been a sudden shortage of an important chemotherapy accompanying drug, Culovort. The suddenness of this has Erin suspicious and since other avenues of trying to talk with the CEO have failed, she is risking her life and reputation. She is able to access his office and his computer and finds files on the Culovort shortage plan which she prints out. As they are printing, Erin hears two voices coming down the hall: a man and a woman and it sounds like the CEO Caskie Royal and he is with a co-worker. They sound a bit drunk and definitely disorderly. Luckily Erin has time to grab her print job, tuck it into her jacket and get into the executive bathroom where there is a window just large enough for her to get out. She is heard as she gets out but runs fast and is not seen by the CEO.
In a second story, Sherlock and Savich are hidden outside of US Senator Hoffman's home keeping an eye on his bedroom window where he told them he has seen the spector of his deceased wife Nikki the last several nights. He believes she is trying to tell him something but he doesn't know what. Hoffman is a friend of Sherlock and Savich's boss, FBI section chief, Jimmy Maitland. Mr. Maitland is concerned some one might be playing a prank or something more sinister on the senator. Savich and Sherlock do see the ghost but she doesn't say anything at that point. Later Savich is visited by her and she warns him that David, Sen. Hoffman, is endanger and doesn't realize what is happening. Extra security is set up for the Senator and Savich also lets him know what he believes Nikki wants to warn him about.
The author throws into the mix FBI Agent Bowie Richards whose seven-year-old daughter Georgie takes ballet lessons from Erin and his desire to have Erin help him out by babysitting Georgie a few days as his usual nanny is out sick. Agent Richards is involved in the break-in at Schiffer Hartwin and also that night a body is found in the park behind the pharmaceutical company and the corpse is quickly identified as an employee of the German main headquarters of Schiffer Hartwin.
This is giving Erin fits as she knows she should confess to doing the break-in and what she found out. On top of that, Sherlock and Savich arrive to help out Bowie so even more FBI agent for Erin to worry about.
Great excitement as the plot lines evolve and are resolved. Romance kept to a minimum - maybe a bit too much but still a great read.

Catherine Coulter is always at the top of my list of reads, but her books are not what they used to be. Catherine Coulter is synonymous with romance as well as suspense, but maybe in a bid to break ties with her roots the romance is seriously lacking in this book. Sherlock and Savich were great as always, but there was no romance between the main characters. The paranormal aspect was somewhat disappointing, and I don't think I will remember anything about this book in the next couple of weeks. I hope next summer's book is better.

Yale Professor Edward Kender has colon cancer in which the drug Culovort he receives as part of his treatment seems to be working when he is informed production by German firm Schiffer Hartwin is nonexistent. Stunned he assumes the pharmaceutical industry is playing death squad to drum up profits. He hires private investigator Erin Pulaski to make an inquiry into the firm. She breaks in and enters the head office of the American subsidiary in Stone Bridge, Connecticut in order to hack into the files of the local CEO Caskie Royal. She finds info on plans to stop the Cartwright Labs in Bartonville, Missouri from manufacturing the drug; as well as stopping it in Spain in favor of a French firm Labortoires Anconder's drug Eloxium. However, Royal and production manager Carla Alvarez arrive and discuss what they are doing with the firm and then have sex..

The next day she learns that the firm's troubleshooter was murdered near where she downloaded computer data that made no sense to her. Meanwhile, the FBI sends married couple Agents Sherlock and Savich to Stone Bridge to assist FBI agent Bowie Richards with the homicide. They begin to find troubles with the pharmaceutical company while Pulaski wonders what to do with her illegal download; Pulaski becomes their prime suspect. Savich also investigates the poisoning of a lobbyist whose real target may have been aimed at a US Senator.

This is a great timely entry in the long running S&S FBI police procedural series due to the pharmaceutical connection as much as the freshness brought forth by Richards and more so by Erin who knows her B&E was stupid but felt strongly that they needed to expose true death squad bottom lines. Fast-paced from the onset, the second case takes somewhat of a back seat though it is well written and quite exciting too. Fans of the series will relish this strong entry while newcomers will find Whiplash a winner too.

Harriet Klausner

Catherine Coulter's books used to be "must reads" for me, as soon as I could get my hands on them. But it seems to me that her writing is getting lazier and lazier. I liked the plot of this book, but she made no effort to develop the new characters she introduced.

At a minimum, a reader should be able to read a line of dialogue and give a fairly accurate guess as to who said it. But lately, all of Coulter's characters sound the same. In this book, people are always feeling things "to their toes" or "to their bones." Or Coulter says "(Erin) realized that Bowie was jollying Chief Amos...," or (Bowie to Erin) "Don't you try to jolly me out of being mad," or (Sherlock to Savich) "You can't jolly me out of it....." None of these expressions are so common that they should be attributed to every main character. And yet Coulter does that. It seems as if she doesn't care any more about making characters, and their dialogue, interesting and refreshing.

It's time for me to move on to an author who DOES care about those things.

The plot of this book is good. It wasn't developed enough though. I've never read a book of Catherine Coulter but it would have been more fascinating to understand the characters better. Part of novelty of reading a mystery novel is trying to solve it and it just wasn't there. By the time you get close to putting the pieces together, the case is basically solved (you figure out who did what.) So the suspense was gone.

It is a short book. Even though it is 400 pages, there are many blank pages that finish the chapter. And many chapters (66).

But the real kicker for me was some of the story lines - like the supernatural. It really didn't need to be there. It just really made think the book was dumb. And then there was the random FBI agent asking the PI to watch his child because she was his daughter's dance teacher - REALLY? I rolled my eyes over that situation more than once. And then the 7-year-old who acts like she is 12... I've never met a 7-year-old who is that mature and I work in an elementary school. So that being told - it COULD have been a good book and unfortunately I wasted my time reading it.

I respect the art of writing a novel and the tedious process of creating the story line. I will give Coulter another chance (by reading another book) but I was very disappointed in this one.

This is another solid story in the Savich and Sherlock series. Sure, it's silly at times. And yes, there is a little romance between two of the other characters but...It's fun, fast paced, a little over the top and I really enjoyed it. Is it the best in the series? No. Is it the worst? Not by a long shot! Even if you have never read any of the other books in the series, this book would still be a good, quick read.

This is my first Coulter novel, and my last. I found the beginning plausible although the PI seemed lacking in both common sense and self confidence. But then the book jumped to another tale and I thought maybe some pages were missing and that the PI was relating a dream or an hallucination. The interview in the second story line is so far from realistic it should be a dream.

I've NEVER picked up a Catherine Coulter book that I didn't just devour---until now. I found Whiplash to be slow, not much romance, and not even a lot of action. I've read all of her FBI series and feel like the characters are part of my family, and I liked meeting them again in this book. I liked Bowie and Erin and really enjoyed the conversations with Georgie. First time that I've ever skipped parts of one of Ms. Coulter's books, but it just didn't hold my interest. I'm really glad to see that several other fans loved it, because she is one of my top 5 authors. I always buy her books without even reading the backs--just know it is going to be good. I'm sure I will continue to do that.

This book is atrocious. It centers around, and dwells heavily on, the idea that a company has broken the law by finding a way to stop creating a drug. The only problem is that there is nothing illegal in that action. There is an actual crime here in corporate espionage but that is buried in an attempt by Coulter to use the book to lambast the FDA without having first made ANY attempt to check her facts to see if any of them were accurate. Very, very few of them actually are. The entire book has more fantasy than a fairy tale. I don't expect authors to get every detail correct but they should make an attempt to at least try to be accurate.

If you can get past that mess what is left is just as bad. There is a weak attempt at forcing a paranormal story line into the book. It is poorly developed, poorly explained and does not actually fit into the main story in any logical way.

Coulter did create two fun characters for the book. Unfortunately she never developed them or their story. You are forced to see the story by reading between the lines or seeing the implications.

I will take great pleasure tossing this book on a beach bonfire this summer.

I started reading the Sherlock/Dillon series with the first book. I gave up after #8, Blindside. It began to feel like every book was the same, just change the names of the other characters; there was no 'growth' between Sherlock & Dillon I thought, either. I sold my original books, then my mother bought one of the later books & loved it. I tried again, but I have to disagree. As well as Coulter can write, these later books do not do her justice. Mom still reads them when she can get them for less, I even started Whiplash on her reccomendation, but gave up after Chapter 2. I got so annoyed at Erin I couldn't read any more. It makes me sad to think the series that started with so much promise has sunk to this level.