Garano je cool!

Nor her best but entertaining enough for a quick holiday read

At Risk

Yeah, at risk of feeling like you’re having a stroke because the sentence structure/writing style, a dialogue are just that bad.
I got this book from one of those free libraries people have in their yards. When I opened it up, there was an orange sticky note: “What do you think makes a story good? What’s your favorite story? -Ruth”. All the books I got from that library had notes from Ruth. Ruth, if you’re reading this: I love you, and thanks for the subtle warning

IT is nothing special. The present tense grates annoyingly, the characters are not engaging enough to invest me, and forensics? what forensics?

Good story with a few twists, l found the ending a little quick and slightly disappointing

تصنف في روايات الاثارة والبوليسية هذه اول مرة اقرأ لبتريشيا كورنويل. لم اجد ما يجذب ويستحوذ على القارئ. تدور الاحداث بين رجال تحري و ومدعي عام و متخصصين في الطب الشرعي. نائبة المدعي العام للولاية امرأة لديها طموح و توق ورغبة قوية للسلطة و قد دخلت في صراع غير علني مع المدعي العام الحالي. لذا ارادت ان تؤكد على مهاراتها و قدراتها وكفاءتها وانها الاجدر لان فترة الانخابات قريبة جداً. عينت تحري ذكي في البحث في ملابسات جريمة قتل حدثت في فترة زمنية قديمة تتجاوز الثلاثين عاما. وسبب اهتمامها هو ان المعهد الوطني في الولاية طور الية عن طريق ال الدي ان آى معرفة المجرم. وتدور الاحداث في اكثر من ولاية و تتعرض النائبة العامة لعملية اغتيال واغتصاب من شخص مجهول يكتش في النهاية ان احد العاملين في المعهد الوطني هو من ارسله للتخلص من النائبة العامة

Not a Kay Scarpetta detective, but a short cold case story.
I felt the author was skipping relevant details jumping scenes and making for a fast read.
Although we are given the answers by the end of the book the bad guys seemed to stand out throughout.
If you are after a quick read then this is the book for you.

At one time, her Kay Scarpetta books were some of the best mystery/thriller fiction around... and then they grew dark & nasty & mean - and I stopped reading them.

Since the "At Risk" series meant a new set of characters and a possible fresh start, I gave both of the books a try this weekend. I'm sad to report that the books read like TV pilot proposals: the sexy ice queen prosecutor with political ambitions who bosses around the good-looking African-American detective hero. The hero has relationships with "broken" women who help him solve cold cases. Politics always interferes with crime-solving... and illicit sex (with a minor, rape, etc.) always manages to appear.

From a more "nuts & bolts" perspective, the books develop too quickly as they're shoehorned into 200 pages in a reduced size format - meaning each one of them is about 1/2 a novel in length.

Patricia Cornwell is a better writer than this... go back to her earlier work instead of bothering with these two books.

Granted, it's not a Kay Scarpetta novel. but I really felt cheated reading this book. It was short on plot, short on character development, double spaced and just not up to Cornwell's talent.

Detective Win Garano is asked to reopen a twenty-year-old murder case, and soon finds himself endangered by the political ambitions of a district attorney. Her eyes are on the Governor’s Mansion, she will stop at nothing to get a leg up. The DA has decided she wants to toss her hat into the ring for the upcoming gubernatorial race and needs an edge. She’s created a new program she calls At Risk, utilizing new technology of DNA analysis. When a violent crime hits close to home, Win receives a mysterious phone call. Special Agent, Win Garano slowly starts to piece the puzzle together piecing it all together.

The character Winston Garano and his backstory is intriguing. The development of characters is decent enough and the story flows smoothly. I did not feel a connection to the characters in this book as I have in most of this author's other books. Having said this, it was a good story and I will read book #2 and see if I feel differently.

PROTAGONIST: Winston Garano, Massachusetts State Police investigator
SERIES: Standalone - originally written as a 15-part series for The New York Times Magazine
RATING: 2.25

Back in 1990, Patricia Cornwell took the mystery reading world by storm with the publication of Postmortem. That book was groundbreaking in that its lead character, Dr. Kay Scarpetta, was a medical examiner and there was a heavy focus on forensics. The detailed forensic analyses obviously appealed to the reading public; Cornwell's subsequent books have all shot to the head of the best seller lists upon release. Along the way, however, many in the mystery reading community found the series to be degrading in quality over time. In each book, the characters became more outrageous and the problems they faced more outlandish. As a result, many gave up on reading Cornwell at all.

At Risk is a departure from the Scarpetta series. It was created as a 15-part serial for The New York Times Magazine. The book introduces Winston Garano, also known as "Win" or "Geronimo", who is an investigator for the Massachusetts State Police. He is directed by the District Attorney, Monique Lamont, who is tough and politically ambitious, to solve a cold case originating in Tennessee. The idea is that if Win solves the case, it will show that the Massachusetts police can beat "any crime any time" and bring national attention to the team (and more specifically, Monique). Frankly, I found that whole premise weak. It didn't seem logical that such an assignment would be made, way outside the normal boundaries of the agency. I'm sure there were at least a few unsolved Massachusetts homicides that might have benefited from an investigation.

I wasn't looking forward to reading At Risk after having given up on the Scarpetta series. Much to my surprise, I found it tolerable (meaning that I could finish it!). The writing in present tense annoyed me, and I also felt irritated by Win's putting the bulk of the investigative work on to a female associate. Although it is not a great work of art, the characters are relatively sane and the plot seemed possible if not plausible.

It will be interesting to see if Cornwell decides to use this as a foundation for another series. As expected, the book hit the best seller list immediately upon publication.

This could have been a great story, but there were too many plot points packed into too short of a book for this to be enjoyable. There was a 20-year old unsolved murder, political fighting, new developments in using DNA to solve crimes, secret scheming, break-ins, etc. Lots and lots of things happening, but nothing was developed in enough depth for it to matter. Short novels are great, but the plot won't make sense with so many competing storylines crunched together. There were a lot of times that I felt like parts of the story were missing. I reread a lot of sections to try and find how we went from one point to another, and there was no connection. I also didn't really understand what happened at the end. This was not a good introduction to Cornwell's new main character, Win Garano.