that was something

even the bickering between the stars was toned down a bit

p54: "hari-kari," a voice sounds from the doorway.

p77: he picks up a stainless-steel baretta 92, a top-of-the-line double-action pistol with a tritium front post sight.

p195: beyond the polis the seawall.

La saga de Kay Scarpetta es muy pochoclera. Bien escrita, te atrapa desde el primer momento. Me gusta porque son libros donde no hay que pensar nada, no es alta literatura, no tiene una prosa compleja o elegante o con firuletes. Se descubre quien es el asesino en las últimas páginas del libro. Buenísimo. (Esos libros cuando adivinaste todo rápido son un embole)

Voy leyendo salteado, a medida que encuentro libros de Patricia Cornwell. Cada uno se puede leer perfectamente por separado.

Me gusta que tanto Kay como Lucy a pesar de ser tan exitosas, profesionales, inteligentes, astutas, deductivas, bellas, etc etc también sufren como cualquiera el desamor, los celos, los parientes insoportables, los compañeros de trabajo infumables (el duelo, en otros libros) Estas cosas humanizan a las heroínas. Ellas son espectaculares sin dejar de ser humanas.

Cosas raras:
1) La traducción

After many years away I thought I'd revisit this series as a palette cleanser with characters I already knew.

Not sure I'll read the next book, this had lots of intertwining threads that I didn't really care about enough, and then the big reveal was underwhelming. As usual the science was interesting (if starting to date reading it 17 years later).

Unfortunately, this one was a miss for me.

I had a hard time getting into this one as I thought I had missed something in the book. It seemed to do too much jumping around. However, once I did get past the first 100 pages, I got into the book and really did enjoy it in the end. I thought I had missed a book in the series, because Lucy seemed stranger than usual.

This one was pretty graphic, so if you like the cozy read, this is not for you. The forensic and psychological things presented are very interesting to me though.

I just read this again and don't remember reading this the first time. You would think that I would have because of all the gory parts in this book. Apparently, I blocked all that out. Still only giving it 4 out of 5 stars.

I would have liked to have given this book three stars but the writing at the end was very disjointed. I thought the premise was more interesting than in the previous book Trace but there were some odd jumps between passages at the end especially between chapters 63 and 64. The last chapter seemed to just plop in out of nowhere like Cornwell decided to just hurry up and get the book over with. Also, I think Lucy's illness and Scarpetta's reaction to it and to Wesley's involvement was way over dramatized.

This book is flat awful. When I hit this passage I should have put the book down:
"Nice of you to let me know," Marino says angrily as he angrily digs through a saddlebag for his tire-plugging kit as he angrily thinks of Joe Amos, getting angrier with each thought."

What the hell? Either the author was inebriated when she wrote this book or she was outsourcing the writing. To 5th-graders.

Add to the awful writing a cast of unlikeable characters and a ridiculous reliance on the Dissociative Identity Disorder plot twist (which is both a cop out and diagnostically sketchy). The ONLY reason I kept reading was to find out what happened and how the different stories tied together. Imagine my irritation when I got to the confusing ending which explained very little and didn't make sense. Why would she do that? Did part of her conclusion get deleted and the editor didn't notice?

I hear her earlier books are better but I'm not sure I want to waste my time finding out.

I was taken in by the premise and, when I noticed the poor writing and gaping plot holes, assumed they wouldn't persist throughout the book. I was disappointed. To be fair, however, if not for my inability to suspend disbelief, it might have been a page-turner.

Let's say 3.5. This series started out great but has become fractured. There are 4 main characters with 4 separate plots so it goes very slowly and none of the plots gets proper coverage. And, as is typical with this series, everything is tied up very quickly and very abruptly in the last couple of pages. Not very satisfying. The most fascinating character in this series (to me at least) is Lucy and she is practically an extra in this book. She has been given the short shrift for a couple of books now. And also, Marino (again maybe just to me) has taken a weird personality shift without explanation. There were some fun supporting characters that had some great potential for conflict and drama that were again somewhat wasted. A missed opportunity. I hope this series improves. I have 3 more of these books in my bookcase. I may jump ship after those if these books don't get better. I didn't hate it. I just didn't love it either. The bar set at the beginning of the series has not been reached in a few books now.

For many years I was a HUGE fan of Patricia Cornwell. And then by the time I read Blow Fly, I found myself increasingly disturbed and disgusted with her books and the self-wallowing of her characters. Gone was the brilliancy and left was the bizarre. I often wondered what was happening in Cornwell's own life and if she was putting her own issues into the emotional and pyschological pitfalls of her characters. I couldn't imagine that she would choose to make them become so unlikeable. Gone were the strengths in the characters that made her books so enjoyable. With the strong interest in reading her newest book set in Dover, DE I decided to go back and catch up on a few books. Can't say that much has changed...the "who done it" and "why" were interesting but I would have liked more details and explanations as opposed to running up and down the coast, trying to connect the dots between the cast of characters and subplots. 2 more to read before I can finally read Post Mortuary.

Esperaba un libro de asesinatos y una investigación policial, pero ha resultado que el número de páginas explicando los problemas y secretos de los protagonistas es muy superior al número de páginas dedicado a la que debería ser la trama principal. Me esperaba bastante más.

Not very interesting. These books are popular, so I thought I'd give them a try, but from the looks of the other reviews I chose the wrong book to start on. Hopefully the others in this series are better, but I must admit that I don't think I'm likely to give them a try. There just wasn't really anything in this that I liked.

Don't get me wrong, it wasn't the worst book I've ever read. The plot was decent, the twists were all right, and it was interesting enough that I finished it (though that doesn't mean much, a book has to be a special mix of 'boring' and 'too long' for me to give up on it). But I can't really say that many good things about it, either.

The characters were not sympathetic. They seemed to spend most of their time feeling sorry for themselves or being assholes, and if they have redeeming qualities we didn't see much of them in this book. It's the 14th in the series (though they seem pretty standalone), so presumably all the characters that we see have had development in previous books, and if I had read the others maybe I would actually, you know, care about the character's whining and their problems.

The writing itself wasn't very good. I can't think of any sentences or dialogue that really stood out to me, and a lot of things were repetitive. There was a lot of telling rather than showing, and none of the characters really had distinct voices.

Disappointing. I won't read another of these books unless I get it for free.

Good to get back into the life of Kay Scarpetta. This had a good twist at the end and like the fact it could continue.