TailSpin

Catherine Coulter

While running away from her father's family, Rachel Abbott watches a small airplane crash into a valley in the Kentucky mountains. She runs over to the crash. The passenger is unconscious and has blood on his head and chest. The pilot groans and Rachel goes over to help him. Jack Crowne is an FBI agent who was flying a psychiatrist back to Washington D.C. when a bomb exploded on the plane. Jack is trying to keep Dr. MacLean alive. Someone is trying to kill the doctor for the secrets he knows.

They get Dr. MacLean to the hospital. Agents Dillon Savitch and Lacey Sherlock arrive in Kentucky to help guard the doctor. Jack is treated, then accompanies Rachel to her uncle's home. He has learned why she was running away and wants to protect her. Some assassins shoot their way to the hidden house, trying to kill all the inhabitants. They didn't expect to run up against resistance.

The group returns to Washington D.C. Dr. MacClean is transferred to the hospital there. Jack and Rachel confront her family after the attempts on her life. Dillon and Sherlock start digging into the history of the doctor's patients, trying to learn who hates the doctor so much. Someone has secrets they don't want revealed and the doctor could. Who?

Once again Catherine Coulter intertwines two mysteries to tell a good story. Both story lines in Tailspin have their good twists and turns, with suspenseful edges and near misses. Savich's psychic powers are not needed in this novel, and it uses good detecting to solve the stories.

Tailspin also digs into a disease that many people don't know. Dr. MacLean has frontal lobe dementia. It attacks people at any age. Patients don't lose their memories immediately. Instead they lose their inhibitions. They say whatever they want. They don't care what they say to who and don't recognize that they shouldn't say what they did. Dr. MacLean has high placed patients in Washington D.C. - politicians, power brokers, ambassadors, and more. He starts telling their secrets and justifying himself. When he's lucid, he knows he's breaking patient confidentiality, but can't censure himself. In fact he justifies his revelations. Frontal lobe dementia is a debilitating disease that progresses rapidly, and tortures all the people around the patient as well as the patient himself. Coulter does and excellent job of showing the horrors of the non-curable disease.

Although the eventual ending is predictable, Coulter's Tailspin is good romantic suspense and a welcome escape.

Notice:  Non-graphic violence, Suggestive dialogue or situations

Sherlock and Savich:

The Cove
The Maze
The Target
The Edge
Riptide
Hemlock Bay
Eleventh Hour
Blind Side
Blow Out
Point Blank
Double Take
TailSpin
Knockout
Whiplash
Split Second
Backfire
Bombshell