Re Read March 2024

Story 4 stars**⬆️
Audio 3.75 stars**
Narrator n  Kate Readingn

Pete & Kay didn't do it for me this time. As much as I enjoy reading the Kay Scarpetta series, this one was downright bizarre.

Kay is requested by the new Chief Mecical Examiner, Dr. Marcus but everything is quite sketchy. She's there to assist in finding out what happened to Jilly Paulson and nothing is what it appears to be.
1. The child's mother appears or acts like she's mentally out of her wits; all along she's playing S & M games and uses Pete Marino as one of her subjects.

2. Everyone claims the child died from pneumonia but there are evident bruises on her back to suggest otherwise.

3. Henrietta, Lucy's friend, was attacked in Lucy's home and the person that invaded her home is the same person responsible for several deaths in the Richmond, VA area.

4. Dr. Marcus hates Scarpetta and does his best to discredit her; only making himself appear insecure, paranoid and silly.

5. Jilly Paulson's father is a Dr. In Charleston, SC and he wants answers to his daughter's death. At the same time he's violating his female patients and was the one who played the S & M games while their daughter, Jilly was at home.

The story finally tells you in the latter chapters of the book why this stalker is harassing a certain individual. Once you find out the reason, you'll think it's unbelievable because of the number of deaths he's committed. It's never explained why he killed Jilly Paulson, a 12 year old girl; just how it was done.

Five years after the dramatic ending of the previous title in this series, Scarpetta's once dead and miraculously restored love Wesley Benton is now in an ongoing relationship with her. Marino, who was nearing his deathbed 5 years ago, has lost weight and quit smoking for the most part.

What's missing is how Scarpetta and the 3 most loved and trusted people in her life: her niece Lucy, Benton, and Marino, restored the trust that must have necessarily been lost during the years of Benton's "death." It is simply not explored.

Even more annoying, the same 3 are yet again deceiving the hapless pathologist through most of this book, and this break in trust is again resolved without any exploration as to exactly how. The story itself wraps up neatly and abruptly, less via scientific investigation and more by personal experiences and internal dialogue, which in my opinion misses the point. The personal dramas, shortcomings, emotional and mental unwellness of this band of heroes is explored ad nauseum and the story itself takes a back seat.

As usual quite readable although I could have done with less familiarity with the bad guys - well, hardly anyone at the end of the day is not a bad guy to one degree or another. I'll keep reading the series, but my journey with Dr Scarpetta may be nearing its end. It's tiresome that her genius, rich, accomplished niece is also an incipient murderer, forever entangling herself in sick love affairs and so full of rage she sees killing people as a viable option to bringing them to a proper justice. It's tiresome that her brilliant, famous love interest is somehow supposedly justified in lying to her on the regular. I'm hoping the next book is more straightforward and less internal.

It has been a while since I read a Cornwell mystery and looked forward to immersing myself into the story. I was disappointed! Scarpetta jumps into a forensic case back in Richmond VA - a place she had been fired from - without checking out with former co-workers what the team was like currently. What professional does that or even considers helping out at a company they have been fired from! Next, her niece, former FBI agent and now owner of a highly specialized private investigative company, has incredibly lax security around her Florida mansion which allow an intruder to enter and attack an employee staying at the house. The employee also is suppose to be highly trained cop, although she was a failed actress which also led to a credibility gap for the story. Employee is sent to Scarpetta's boyfriend to be analyzed for clues as to who did the dastardly deed which means Scarpetta's vacation with boyfriend is cancelled but boyfriend and niece don't tell Scarpetta, like this world renowned forensic specialist can't keep it a secret.

The entire storyline was not believable and I kept thinking that authors PJ Tracy does it better.

Patricia Cornwell never fails and this book is no exception. I really enjoy reading the Kay Scarpetta novels.

Bei "Staub " handelt es sich um Band 13 einer. Deswegen dachte ich mir erst nichts, als ich nicht gleich in die Geschichte rein kam und die Protagonisten für mich völlig unsinnig agierten.
Leider legte sich dieses Gefühl bis zum Schluss nicht. Der Roman zog sich zäh und absolut nicht mitreißend.
Das war mein erstes und auch mein letztes Buch dieser Autorin.

Terrific storytelling!

I don't like change and was a bit sad to learn Kay and company had moved in different directions. But, wow! This is a great story! Loved the style of the storytelling as well. Going back and forth from different characters POV. Was completely captivated by each storyline and read through way faster than usual! If you're a Kay Scarlett a fan, don't miss this one!

Cornwell and Scarpetta should just gracefully retire !!

Patricia Cornwell is not on a good roll. Her atrocious non-Scarpetta "Isle of Dogs" was hardly redeemed by the weak return of Kay and Lucy in "Blowfly", wherein Scarpetta barely put in a cameo and Lucy took center stage (disguised as Wonder Woman), while poor Pete Marino was cast as little better than a bum and Benton Wesley was resurrected from the dead of all things.

At least in "Trace", half of the story is about Scarpetta, and though grouchy, she seems pretty much her normal self as she is brought back to her old building as a consultant to work a difficult case involving a young child's death. Meanwhile, Lucy's lover Henri (an actress turned cop), has been sent to Aspen, where Benton psychoanalyzes her to help determine whodunit, while Lucy and her aide Rudy work the case where it occurred in Florida. Confused yet? When all these plotlines test plausibility by converging into our suspect, ex-ME morgue geek Edgar Allen Pogue (what a clever name), we're tired already and just want it over. Revealing the murderer halfway through and then just putting on a weak hunt for the guy also ruined any pretense of suspense.

To us, introducing spotty relationships between Lucy and Henri, Henri and Benton, Lucy and Rudy, even Kay and Marino (his role never was clear) and Kay and new ME Marcus, just added terrible clutter without ever going anywhere. A couple of these scenarios might have made entertaining subplots had they resolved into something. Especially the shoddy work now happening under the new Virginia ME should have resulted in a firing or something, but the story just drifted to an end. Perhaps our reading of Ms. Cornwell, who seems unable to rekindle the fires of her earlier writing, deserves the same fate.

(#13 in the Kay Scarpetta series)-This is definitely an improvement from Blow Fly. To me, this was almost written as a screenplay. The best part of the book is Marino. The book kept my interest thru the whole way. One of her better ones I say.

This is the reason I needed to start a goodreads account in the first place. To keep track of my ridiculous Patricia Cornwell addiction. I can never remember where I left off in the series and then halfway through a book I'll remember I've read it. Plus, I go through spurts of reading her, which complicates memory matters. So note to self: you've read this. In addition, this book was actually really good comparatively. Her first novels were ridiculously cheesy but now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure the last few have been much better... And her writing style has changed a lot. "Trace" was much more focused on her main characters and she actually gave them some depth. The plot was less "OMG, we have to catch someone, but who?" and more about allowing the readers to get inside the heads of longstanding characters. That said, the plot wasn't bad either.

This one felt like after the Point of Origin-Black Notice-TLP-Blow Fly story arc she lost her raison d'etre. She continues to be all over the map with Lucy's character - she's supposedly a genius who made several fortunes with computers, but she's also a total basketcase who gets so easily obsessed with pretty women that she can't even maintain her own life and career. She has her own company that she supposedly started with Teun McGovern, who basically hasn't been mentioned as a part of it since TLP. The big bad in this book is really pedestrian.....a weirdo former morgue worker with an overbearing mother who became obsessed with Lucy ten years ago but only started doing something about it recently. The tie-in between the attack on Henri in Florida and Scarpetta's Richmond case is so contrived it's ridiculous, and she alludes to another conspiracy to frame Scarpetta in Richmond and then never really develops that line. I'd say this is not quite as bad as Cause of Death, but it's pretty darn close

I blew through this one! ❤️ I was a bit disappointed that it was 5 years later and a lot happened that I wasn’t part of!! But I was glad to finally have time to read one of her books again!!