The tenth installment of Catherine Coulter's FBI saga (Blowout, Blindside, et al.) may be her most action-packed, psychologically intense thriller to date. As husband-and-wife agents Dillon Savich and Lacey Sherlock are faced with the most intimately frightening case of their careers (apprehending a psychopath obsessed with evening the score with Savich for some long-ago injustice), FBI special agent Ruth Warnecki is busy trying to unravel the bizarre mystery of a murdered music student found in a rural Virginia cave.

Coulter hits the ground running at full speed in Point Blank, beginning the novel with Warnecki deep underground following an old treasure map to what she hopes is a cache of stolen Confederate gold that was intended for General Lee more than a century earlier. Someone -- or something -- overpowers Warnecki in the dark, and she blacks out, regaining consciousness with amnesia. After a surreal assassination attempt, Warnecki eventually remembers her identity and revisits the cave with Savich and Sherlock, only to find the body of a woman, definitely dead and definitely embalmed. Meanwhile, a madman and his sadistic teenage sidekick are on a mission to enact unholy retribution on Savich and Sherlock…

Blending liberal amounts of psychological suspense and police procedural mystery with a smidgen of romance, the prolific Coulter's FBI novels (all of which can be read as stand-alone thrillers) will appeal to a surprisingly wide range of readers, from those who follow Nora Roberts, Sandra Brown, and Tami Hoag to fans of writers like John Lescroart, Michael Connelly, and Lee Child.