HEMLOCK BAY

FBI agent Dillon Savich is on the trail of twin serial killers—or are they triplets?

Tommy and Timmy Tuttle abduct and slaughter young boys in ritual ceremonies to satisfy the fiendish appetites of the mysterious entities they call Ghouls. But is Timmy really Tammy? Or is Tommy? Only their dimwitted cousin Marilyn Warluski knows for sure—and there’s not a moment to spare. Savich has tracked the Tuttles to an abandoned barn in rural Maryland, rescuing their latest victims in the nick of time. Hey! Timmy just turned into Tammy! No, that’s Tommy! But what are those miniature spinning cyclone-ghouls that Tammy/Timmy/Tommy seem to will into being? Blam! Savich shoots one and the rest disappear. Meanwhile, out in Hemlock Bay in northern California, Savich’s younger sister, Lily Frasier, is recovering from a car crash that nearly took her life. Her creepy doctor won’t give her painkillers because she tried to commit suicide several months ago after the death of her young daughter in a hit-and-run accident. But Lily thinks it wasn’t an accident—and she has a feeling that her ostensibly devoted husband Tennyson could be trying to kill her, aided by his tyrannical father Elcott Frasier. A helpful hypnotist clues her in: She’s right. Are the male Frasiers after the paintings her grandmother left to her, now worth millions? Or are they mere puppets for Olaf Jorgenson, octogenarian Swedish shipping zillionaire and art collector who once loved her grandmother? Savich introduces Lily to Simon Russo, sexy art broker, who gets to the bottom of the skullduggery while Savich gets back to chasing the Tuttles. Lily and Simon are kidnapped by a giant meathead named Alpo, escape the nefarious clutches of weird Olaf, and are menaced again by Tommy/Timmy/Tammy, now unmasked as a psychopathic illusionist with an unquenchable thirst for human blood.

Preposterous plot, improbable people: a familiar mix from bestselling Coulter (The Edge, 1999, etc.).