Paradox

Prolific author Catherine Coulter has written over 80 novels ( a complete list here), from historical romances to contemporary FBI thrillers. This book is the 23rd in the FBI series. Married FBI agents Lacey Sherlock and Dillon Savich are awakened by a monitor failure alarm and find a man in their 5-year-old son's room. They effectively thwart the kidnap attempt but fail to catch the would-be kidnapper. Two days later, the police chief of tiny Willicott, MD, Ty Christie, is standing on her deck overlooking the foggy lake when she sees a man in a rowboat strike the other passenger of the boat in the head and dump the body overboard. The killer disappears into the fog, but when the body is recovered, it turns out to be a federal prosecutor. The FBI, specifically Special Agents Sherlock and Savich, are quickly on the case and discover another FBI agent tied up and left for dead in an old derelict house on the lake shore. Forensic evidence strongly suggests the perpetrators of the two crimes are the same person, Victor Nesser, recently escaped from a mental institution. The woman dumped from the rowboat was the prosecutor who got Nesser put in the mental hospital, which saved his life as he was on trial for murder. Apparently he wasn't grateful. Meanwhile, Chief Christie is dealing with the fact that the initial search for a body in the lake has turned up dozens of skeletons, and the only conclusion is that a serial killer has been operating in the area and using the lake for a dumping ground.  Well plotted with decent characterization and setting. No doubt much of the character development for Sherlock and Savich has occurred in preceding installments of this series.  Here's a brief review from Publishers Weekly.