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BLINDSIDE by Catherine Coulter

BLINDSIDE

by Catherine Coulter

Pub Date: Aug. 1st, 2003
ISBN: 0-399-15056-0
Publisher: Putnam

Everybody’s favorite fantasy: dead math teachers.

But why are they being killed? Rage over failing grades? Beatings or abuse by a geeky substitute? Well, the behavioral science guys in Quantico will just have to figure it out. FBI investigator Dillon Savich, though, is sure the perp is a man. Meanwhile, his buddy Miles Kettering’s six-year-old son Sam has just been kidnapped and taken all the way from Virginia to Tennessee, though the intrepid youngster gives bad guys Fatso and Beau the slip when he climbs out a window. He’s quickly rescued by spunky Sheriff Katie Benedict, who tries to shoot the kidnappers. But one of them, undaunted, is still after Sam. Why? Segue to another creepy house in the Tennessee woods, and meet the Reverend Sooner McCamy, brooding founder of the Sinful Children of God church. His much younger, gorgeous blond wife Elsbeth seems to be very much under his thumb. Agent Sherlock and Katie take a quick peek around the premises when this strange couple isn’t home and find a secret room rigged out for sadomasochistic fun and games. Gee, what do you suppose the marble slab with handcuffs at each corner is for? How about that wooden block with a padded fur top? And check out these whips . . . . Oh, never mind: Is that Fatso or Beau making noise outside? Looks like one of the bad guys is the reverend’s brother. And it’s revealed, none too adroitly, that McCamy is obsessed with the stigmata of Christ, and hopes to find a child whose little hands show the miraculous evidence of Our Redeemer’s wounds. Wow, how did this video get here? It shows a much younger Sam with a rash on his hands that looks like stigmata! Time to torch the McCamys’ house . . . heck, they’re dead. But someone is still taking potshots at Katie. Who? And did everyone forget about the lunatic who was killing the math teachers?

And so it goes in Coulter land (Eleventh Hour, 2002, etc.).