Unnatural Exposure

Just finished this one today. I was already about halfway into it before I put it down to read a few other things so I decided to pick it back up again for a reading challenge. It was fine. Parts dragged because always with Cornwell’s books there is going to be some dragging, in my opinion. The story was fine, kept me guessing. I wouldn’t say that any of it was a complete mind blower, but it was fine.

This mystery featuring Virginia Chief Medical Examiner Kay Scarpetta reminds me of why I was so addicted them a decade ago. You get an irascible, brilliant hero pushed to her limits, the thrills of a dangerous chess match with a serial killer, infighting with jealous competitors, and supportive teamwork from her cool lover Benson, a whiz with the FBI profiling squad, her irreverent blue-collar detective liaison Marino, and her tough techie niece Lucy.

This is the 8th of 20 in the series, and, having read 13, I feel this was the last one that was really satisfying to me. To me it was a pleasure because the story stayed focused on her perspectives on the case and her skills in medical forensics and public health. Unlike some of the later books, this one didn’t divert excessively into the soap opera of her relationships with Marino, Benson, and Lucy. Others may object for the opposite reason, i.e. that it didn’t develop those relationships very much. There is a major public health and infectious disease aspect to the story that appealed to me, although others may be bored with the technical detail or jaded from more thrilling medico-techno thrillers from the likes of Crichton and others. Yet credit is due to Cornwell for helping spawn the current popularity of technically oriented CSI procedurals. And despite the technical detail, the draw of these stories for me is Scarpetta’s personality, tough with those who get in her way and kind and empathetic to those in need.

Due to a conspiracy of postal workers, I'm still stuck with Cornwell. As usual, the relationship between KS and BW happened between this book and the last and now she's sick of him. While there seem more general personal/private moments, they are of the empty variety. She even adds a bloody recipy at one point. The true disappointment though is that Val McDermid's praise is on the cover - Cornwell not only doesn't marry cutting edge science with old fashioned horror, she makes what is genuinely tragic seem boring. Of course McDermid must (have) genuinely admire(d) her, but characters standing up to abusive fathers or getting AIDS in crime novels is not that extraordinary to say Wilson copied it, and the review still grates. 150 quick pointless pages in, we have the usual conniving upstart who can't be touched, the usual plane journeys to visit a guy with a microscope, the usual M=fate + L=skinnylovely + B=imposing blablabla.

Despite all that, perhaps due to not expecting anything anymore, the first half was a fast read, but then her thin excuse of a "plot" again fades behind pointless chapters on wonderful military achievements - the worst of that was of course Potter's Field and Body Farm especially, two fascinating RL areas she (ab)used for titles and at a flimsy, illogical pretext for her "plots". Not only would I prefer to read the textbooks than what she filters through from her research, she also keeps explaining how one can "mail" photos after "scanning" them in a book published in 1997, adding to the weird mix of condescencion and Crichtonesque info dump.

Worst of course is the good Doctor, who goes in unprotected to a body she was told had surely smallpox, and when other people are shot for violating quarantine, she's travelling blithly around, angry that Marino is scared of getting a lethal disease from her - I'm actually too angry to point out all the idiocies about when and how who and what is protected or not. Least of all I care about her second ultra-sensationalist plot though - atom bomb last time, plague this time, she'll run out of James Bond threats soon - this writer is so beyond the pale I'm only glad there's nothing to like.

Oh, I liked that KS went and for once helped the wrongfully arrested gay guy - except it was utter overcompensation for the times she did nothing, esp. when it concerned her own employees, and Cornwell's gay men (only/always) weep, and whenever she brings someone soup, they DIE. The criminal is as usual someone we never go to know but KS knew for ages *yawn* and KS's criminally insane stupidity was ok because she knows best that she wasn't rilly sick.

The absolute low/high point was the end though. After the - never shown, seen or described - time she spent with BW, she couldn't stand him and he wanted to marry her. Somehow the death of the ever absent Mark (that also happened somewhere between books and cropped up as an aside) is now the big stumbling block she never got over. He was the love of her life? So she has to fly back to the UK again - she might one day well fly to the bloody moon to get a better look at the outline of the USA, if she keeps that up, but anyway - there she makes a scene until the smart FBI guy caves in and confesses Mark had had a woman with him, so she tells BW that she loves him, the end.

PS: The only love here is of course for Lucy, who isn't only the smartest, strongest, most beautiful young goddess alive, but in this book there is actually a scene where they nearly land in bed together and KS thinks that she's not Lucy's girlfriend.

Cornwell returns with a powerful mystery that pits Scarpetta against her most cunning adversary to date. When bodies begin showing up, dismembered, both in Virginia and Ireland, Scarpetta cannot help but investigate to determine what sort of brutal psychopath might be on the loose. When the killer begins to contact her with clues and intimate knowledge from her life, the mystery gets personal. Engaged in an ongoing dialogue in chat rooms, Scarpetta comes cursor to cursor with the killer on numerous occasions. When the murders escalate and a deadly virus is added to the mix, the case moves from urgent to cataclysmic. Cornwell pulls out all the stops and brings closure in stunning fashion to this exquisite Scarpetta novel, sure to impress fans and newbies alike.

The powerful character development for which Cornwell is well known in the series is not lost within this powerful story line and plot. While the detail and attention to nuances is stellar, the reader is not lost in the technical jargon. Cornwell does well to introduce new and exciting ideas into her stories, while keeping her beloved characters and developing their back stories to the point of sucking the reader in. This novel has great development and a whopper of an epilogue to tie up some loose ends left dangling for a few novels.

Kudos Madam Cornwell on an excellent novel and a highly entertaining story.

Mi segundo libro de esta autora. No es para mí, sinceramente.

Much better than book 7, Cause of Death. Whereas the prior novel had more to do with wacky cult conspiracy theories, this one was firmly focused on Scarpetta's gory morgue work.

In this one, garbage dump workers discover what appears to be a section of a body at a Virginia landfill. A local cop named Ring suspects the driver who reported it first, but Kay advises a slow and steady investigation - particularly since there may be a connection between this murder and several unsolved cases in the UK. Later, she and her assistant discover strangely clustered pustules during the autopsy. Dr. Scarpetta sends several slides for analysis and expects a report of chicken pox, or similar.

It's not chicken pox.

Other stuff that happens: Merino is more of an ass than usual. Now that he's finally divorced, Scarpetta tells Benton she's tired of sneaking around like they still have something to hide. Lucy and Janet are fighting over their individual FBI assignments taking them away from each other. Lucy's whiz-bang technology helps Scarpetta learn where the killings took place.

This one was definitely a step back up. I'm starting to see how inconsistent Cornwell's quality is from novel to novel, and I hope the next few remain as interesting as this one was.

I’ve haven’t read a Patricia Cornwell book for sometime and like finding a pair of old comfortable slippers it was easy to revisit the same Kay Scarpetta character that I had enjoyed reading about before. The story starts off well with an interesting case where murders have taken place and several bodies found all with similar links of death. This was very intriguing! Unfortunately this story quickly changes and goes on a different tangent with questionable links to the start. The book is very much written about Kay Scarpetta’s personal life as much as it is about the case she is trying to solve. The ending is abrupt and uninspiring and reads as if Cornwell herself had gotten fed up of the story. Another book that had great potential but doesn’t quite deliver.

Once again, I enjoyed this Kay Scarpetta story. The plot revolves around a mysterious disease and the nasty consequences from it. The setup was good, and so was the slow process of finding out that actually happened. I feel that the ending was very rushed, but everything else was descent.