More of the same. Dedicated "with love to Barbara Bush". The way Scarpetta keeps oggling her naked niece's body gets more and more disturbing, esp. since I doubt Cornwell will make a real f/f incest case out of this. Poor Benton has his "still surprisingly supple" body dutifully admired, and pale feet like her niece.
The blurb as usual proclaims not only that she does it best and has bad imitators, but that this one is "her best and bleakest" (don't get up my hopes - or maybe that just means the guy will die (to resurrect later)) and praises the "sinister atmosphere ... cool prose" = as usual the most puzzling thing about this series. Could she be so famous for political reasons? At least it's quick to skim through.


ETA: 100 pages left to go, so a little about the "plot": we're back with Temple Gault! You thought she finally killed off that least threatening, most boring serial killer of all, but there's still his partner, who is similarly off-screen, has similarly inexplicable superduperhumannatural capabilities that enable her to work from inside prisons and across states in no time and with no money - where was I? Oh, yes, and Kay is so very scared and terrorised again because Claire is as much a scourge as Temple was *yawn* and so she makes a few extra-flights to run after her niece for no reason other than the descriptions of banal manual tasks hadn't filled enough pages yet. The "death" of Benton was of course only a paragraph but will duly be revisited as the trauma of her life, see all past novels. The FBI for the first time ever gets gently criticised, with disclaimers all around, indicating again her political involvement (I have no interest in finding out who took over the FBI when). The only one of her many personal-political opinions I thought good was the case of a child dying because it's parents were against medicine because god heals, but that was also gently done because - fitting with her politics - KS is more and more religious.

There are less things to quote this time, so I will later add the pertinent lines - ignoring all the insane comparisons and semantically wrong conversations (just the sun bouncing like a manic child with her ball, no "his voice was as muscular as his body" this time, and I'm focussing on the interpersonal).

But for now, just this: I actually threw back my head and laughed out loud at the ... well, perhaps it was meant a horrifying, tragic ending, but it was all too much: first the only other murders KS hadn't cleared yet were retconned to Carrie's new partner, who has nearly as stupid a name as Temple Gault but whose motive was that he had bad acne. Not. Kidding! And then, after spending the whole book talking about the ever absent Carrie as "the monster" and "evil", Kay and Lucy *shakes with sad hilarity* get into a helicopter battle with them ... *cracks up again* ow ow ow. Sob?

Had not read a Cornwell for many yrs and had a free paperback from a garage sale so just read. I still enjoy the mysteries and having a smart female medical examiner but there are things I would change in the book if I could. I knew what I was getting with Cornwell and was as expected.

I took a quick glance at previous reviews for this book on Goodreads and found an abundance of deep hate for Point of Origin (book nine of the Kay Scarpetta series). I was actually surprised. I didn't love this book, and I'll elaborate on that in a minute, but I certainly didn't hate it!

You know how some long book series can be read out of order? The Kay Scarpetta series is like that - with a few exceptions. This book is one of those exceptions. Much of what happens between the pages of Point of Origin relies heavily on characters and events in the past eight books. If you don't read the previous books, you won't be confused. But you certainly won't feel invested in this story in the slightest, which is where I think at least some of the hateful reviews are coming from. Meanwhile ... my personal thoughts on the book are below.

I feel like I learn something new in every Kay Scarpetta book I read. This time I learned a lot about how fires work. I always find the little tidbits fascinating. I love to learn. Patricia Cornwell is very good at filling her books with little bits of academia without talking over my head or making me feel like an idiot. That's a skill that many business writers could learn, actually! Kay always finds interesting little artefacts in her autopsies that seem to come back to be really important later in the story. She found one in Point of Origin and I knew exactly what it was and why it was there. I kept yelling at her that she should know this, meanwhile hoping I was wrong because wouldn't it be an amazing twist to be wrong about something I felt so sure about? But no. I was right. I think Cornwell might have played down Kay's intelligence a bit too much in this regard. I was a bit disappointed. Also, in the beginning chapters of the book one key question was how did the fire burn so hot so fast with no catalyst. I'm not sure that question was ever answered, unless I missed it somewhere.

Another disappointment came at the end. While Cornwell is very good at building the suspense, throwing in the red herrings, detailing the evidence; she doesn't seem so good at the big action scenes that conclude the story. This is the second book in the series where I'm prepared for a big showdown at the end (equivalent to a "boss battle" in a video game) and I'm left feeling like the action scenes were glossed over. I hope this is improved upon later in the series!

And then there's the things I can't get into because they involve key points in the overarching series. Let's just say there were some emotional scenes that nearly broke my heart. I still believe Pete Marino is my favorite character of the series. And even though she tries to come across as cold and clinical, I still wanted to give Kay a great big hug.

In conclusion, I give Point of Origin 3 out of 5 burning stars. There were a few disappointments that were too big to warrant more stars. But I still have a deep attachment to the characters and want to continue the series in the hopes that future books will be back up to 4 or 5 stars. They all can't be perfect when there are so many to be read, after all!

realmente me ha gustado mucho. Según pasan los libros ves la evolución de los personajes.