Enigma - Catherine Coulter

   2017; 482 pages.  Book 21 (out of 24) in the “FBI Thriller” series.  New Author? : Yes.  Genres : Crime Thriller.  Overall Rating : 9*/10.

 

    It’s been a bad day for Agent Dillon Savich, the chief of the FBI’s CAU (Criminal Apprehension Unit).  A friend of his, Dr. Janice Hudson, called to alert him to a hostage situation at her neighbor’s house, where some guy had broken into the house, taped the nine-months-pregnant woman to a chair, and was screaming incoherently at police officers outside.

 

    Long story short, Savich entered the house from a back way, shot the perpetrator - which put him in a coma - and saved the day.  Sounds like a glorious day, huh?

 

    Alas, the head of the police squad is now royally pissed off at Savich for stealing the limelight from the police, who had jurisdiction in the situation, and felt they had everything under control.  It’s never good to show up the cops, even if you’re from the FBI.

 

    Oh well.  At least things can’t get any worse today, can they?

 

    Hmm.  How about if a maximum security killer escapes from a prison van as he’s being transferred to a federal penitentiary under heavy guard.  Does that qualify as “the day getting worse?”

 

What’s To Like...

   My wife reads a lot of Catherine Coulter books, so I’ve heard of her for quite a while.  I always presumed she was strictly a romance writer, so it was delight to discover that she also writes an straight up "FBI Thriller” series, of which Enigma is Book 21 out of 24.

 

    There are two main storylines: 1.) Why did the gunman take a pregnant woman hostage, and why does he call himself an “Enigma”?  2.) Who went to a lot of trouble to spring the convicted felon Manta Ray from the prison van, why?, and is the FBI going to catch him again?

 

    The story is fast-paced with a nice mixture of equal parts action, intrigue, and personal interactions among the members of Savich's FBI team.  By switching back and forth between the two stories, Catherine Coulter avoids any slow spots.  There are 61 chapters, plus a Prologue and three (count ‘em, three!) Epilogues covering 482 pages; that averages out to just under eight pages per chapter.  The entire tale takes place in the greater Washington DC area.

 

    You’ll learn a smidgen of Russian to use on your sweetheart: “moy golub” means “my dove”.  I also learned that “flashbang” is slang for a stun grenade.  I liked the obscure (for me) music references: Twenty One Pilots, whom I have heard of, and James Bay, who was new to me.  I chuckled at the brief reference to the use of apricot pits for medicinal purposes.  I was once hired to document a synthesis for the active ingredient, amygdalin (I am a chemist by trade), but it turned out to be a setup when the client abruptly changed his mind and wanted me to make amphetamines instead.  That was the end of that little business venture.

 

    The ending is not so much a “thrills and spills” affair, as a matter of solving the two plotlines mentioned above.  There are some nice twists along the way in both of them , and this is the first time I’ve read a book where there are three Epilogues.  Be sure to read all three; the last one is a stunner.

 

Excerpts...

    “I’m told you’re an expert at survival and all, but my boss, Agent Dillon Savich, didn’t say whether you leap tall buildings.”

    He laughed.  “Hey, Wittier, I’m proud of you.  It’s hard to crack jokes when you’re terrified.  You doing better?”

    “No, but I’m sucking it up, and insulting you helps.”

    “You’ll be fine once your brain accepts you’re in expert hands, namely mine.  Yes, give me a bottle of water and the sun, and I can find an anthill.  Leap tall buildings?  Three stories is my personal best.”  (loc. 467)

 

    “The cogeners we tested proved too toxic, particularly to the nervous system and bone marrow.  We stopped then because there’s only so far a pharmaceutical company can venture into basic research like that.  We survive by developing drugs we can sell, and being old isn’t a reimbursable medical condition.  None of the insurance companies are set to pay for any such drug, and so extended work in an area like anti-aging isn’t in our financial interest.”  (loc. 3598)

 

Kindle Details…

    Right now, Enigma is selling for $8.99 at Amazon.  The rest of the 24-book series varies in price from $7.99 to $24.99, except for Book 2, The Maze, which is currently discounted to the generous price of $1.99.  Catherine Coulter has another 60+ books (assuming Wikipedia’s list is comprehensive), most of which fall into all sorts of Romance categories.

 

“Whenever science makes a discovery, the Devil grabs it while the angels are debating the best way to use it.” (Alan Valentine, Epigraph )

    There’s really nothing to grouse about in Enigma.  I kept waiting for the two storylines to merge, but, and this is not a spoiler, they never did.  I’ve now gathered that this is the norm for Catherine Coulter’s FBI Thriller series: we follow the actions of Dillon Savich’s team of agents, and usually they are working on more than one case per book.  So the reader ends up getting two crime-thriller tales in one book.  That's kinda neat.

 

    Other than that, all I can say is that I figured out the “Enigma” mystery a lot quicker than Savich and company did.

 

    I found Enigma to be a delightful introduction to Catherine Coulter and this series.  No, I won’t be reading any of her Romance books; I leave those up to my wife, who loves them.  In closing I should mention that I only noticed six instances of cussing in the entire book.  It says something about a writer, when she can pen a crime-thriller that keeps my interest from beginning to end while not having to resort to almost any R-rated stuff.

 

    9 Stars.  I have two other books from this series on my TBR shelf: The Maze (Book 2) and Bombshell (Book 17).  If they’re anywhere near as good as this book was, this could be a series that I get deeply into.