The Target: Summary and book reviews of The Target by Catherine Coulter, plus links to an excerpt from The Target and a biography of Catherine Coulter.

THE TARGET is an absorbing new contemporary suspense novel about a man and a woman thrown together into a diabolical conspiracy and the little girl at its center. Coulter plunges her main characters into a labyrinth where the unthinkable happens and the unimaginable becomes terrifyingly real. In the novel, Ramsey Hunt escapes unwanted media attention after a notorious incident by retreating to a cabin high in the Rockies. But his solitude is shattered when he finds a small girl unconscious and hurt in the forest. When strangers suddenly come into his private meadow with the intent to kill, the found girl offers up no clues. She's mute.

Molly Santera, the little girl's mother, catches up with Ramsey and her daughter, mistaking him for the kidnapper. When she discovers that he instead saved her daughter, there is little time for thanks. The three of them are pursued by men who want them badly. Eventually, they go for sanctuary to the Chicago compound of Molly's father, crime boss Mason Lord. Even there, however, safety is fleeting as their pursuers prove as relentless as their motives are baffling.

With an unexpected assist from FBI agents Dillon Savich and Lacey Sherlock (last seen in The Maze), Molly and Ramsey begin to unravel the clues, and in the process make an astonishing discovery as to the true center of the target.

Like Coulter's previous suspense stories, The Target is rich in tension and filled with shocking twists, and it offers an engaging look at the binds that tie people brought together by danger. The Target confirms that Catherine Coulter is one of today's most versatile fiction writers.