The Lost Key

A Brit in the FBI Novel #2

by Catherine Coulter, J. T. Ellison

Putnam

Contemporary Romance: Romantic Suspense, Contemporary Romance

September 30, 2014

ISBN-10: 0399164766

ISBN-13: 9780399164767

Available in: Hardcover

Read an Excerpt

The Lost Key
by Catherine Coulter, J. T. Ellison

The newest entry in the sizzling international thriller series featuring Nicholas Drummond, from #1 New York Times-bestselling authors Catherine Coulter and J. T. Ellison.

Freshly minted FBI agent Nicholas Drummond is barely out of his Quantico training when he and his partner, Mike Caine, are called to investigate a stabbing on Wall Street.

Their investigation, however, yields more questions than answers. It quickly becomes clear that the victim, John Pearce, was more than the naval historian and antiquities dealer he appeared to be. What Drummond doesn’t know is that buying and selling rare books was Pearce’s cover, and that he had devoted his life to discovering the whereabouts of a missing World War I U-boat concealing a stash of gold bullion, and an unexpected surprise that only raises more questions. When Drummond and Caine find both of Pearce’s adult children have disappeared, the case assumes a new sense of urgency. The FBI agents know their best lead lies in the victim’s cryptic final words—“The key is in the lock.” But what key? What lock?

The search for Adam and Sophia Pearce takes them on an international manhunt, which threatens to run them afoul of an eccentric billionaire industrialist with his own plans not only for the lost gold, but the creation of a weapon unlike anything the world has ever seen.

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Catherine Coulter's Bio

Catherine Coulter is the author of 65 novels, including 59 New York Times bestsellers. She earned her reputation writing historical romances. Over a decade ago she added suspense thrillers to her repertoire—with great success. The Cove, the first book in her bestselling "FBI Suspense Thriller Series" spent nine weeks on the New York Times list and has to date sold almost 2 million copies. The Maze, which was reviewed in Publisher’s Weekly as "gripping enough to establish Coulter firmly in this genre," was Coulter’s first book to land on the Times hardcover bestsellers list. Since then, she has lived up to that promise with ten additional back-to-back bestselling FBI thrillers, including The Target, The Edge, Riptide, Hemlock Bay, Eleventh Hour, Blindside, Blowout, Point Blank, Double Take, Tailspin, Knockout, and two omnibus editions: The Beginning and Double Jeopardy.

Coulter’s first novel, The Autumn Countess, was published at the end of 1978. She chose a Regency romance for her debut because, says Coulter, "as any published author will tell you, it’s best to limit the unknowns in a first book, and not only had I grown up reading Georgette Heyer, but I earned my M.A. degree in 19th century European History." Following The Autumn Countess, Coulter wrote six more Regency romances. In 1982 she published her first long historical, Devil’s Embrace. She has continued to write long historicals, interspersing them with hardcover contemporary novels, beginning with False Pretenses in 1988.

Coulter lives with her physician husband in Marin County, California. She grew up in a horse ranch in Texas. She graduated from the University of Texas and received her graduate degree at Boston College. Prior to becoming a full-time writer, she worked on Wall Street as a speech writer. Catherine loves to travel and ski, reads voraciously, and has a reputation for telling jokes, believing the publishing business is too crazy not to laugh.