Britney Horton
Great Books, p. 4/5
Mrs. Sanders
Novel of Choice Essay

When first hearing about this essay, picking a novel to write about was almost a no brainer. Split Second by Catherine Coulter was on the top of my reading list ever since I picked up one of her books a couple years ago. Coulter mainly writes about FBI thriller stories, which hooked my attention right from the beginning. The setting of Split Second helps the reader understand each of the characters on a personal level, as well as setting the mood for the events that happen in the book. While multiple literary elements are emphasized throughout Split Second, Coulter’s main purpose of the book is patience through teamwork is the key to success. One way that Coulter expresses the theme is through the character’s interactions with each other. Agent Dillon Savich is the main character of this book, and the leader of his FBI team. His wife, Agent Sherlock, is just one of the members of his team. Being married and working in the same work environment can cause issues among the couple and the other employees, but not in this case. Savich and Sherlock act as a power team, and even though they’re married, they treat each other just as normal co-workers. Their relationship, however, is why they have the greatest teamwork out of all the characters in the book. The trust they have in each other, along with great confidence and knowledge of the others weaknesses and strengths, gives them an overall advantage in the FBI with solving cases.
Savich and Sherlock are also joined by agents Cooper McKnight and Lucy Carlyle, whom at the beginning of the novel, despised each other. The bitter feelings mainly came from Lucy’s perspective because her general feelings towards Cooper were that she thought he was an immature, womanizing agent. Only later on in the book does a relationship blossom, turning these bitter feelings into love. Coulter had this change in feelings occur because it not only improved the book’s theme, but it also created another story line apart from the original story, along with creating a new theme of learning not to judge a person