Absolutely love this series, Kay Scarpetta, Benton, and Marino keep me reading. I love their dynamic and, as I've said before, even though these are set decades ago I am still finding them fascinating. Yes, liberties are taken, the above-mentioned never seem to get older, Kay Scarpetta is a one-woman crime-solving machine, but they are incredibly addictive.

I get a lot of books in trades. Including this one. Many times people think I'm a fan of stuff I don't particularly like.

Case in point. DNF.

I got a couple of chapters in, and Kay Scarpetta was acting like Lucy Van Pelt being a fussbudget. I got annoyed and moved on.

Kay Scarpetta moet een lijk onderzoeken waarvan de ledematen en het hoofd verwijderd zijn. Ze ontdekt vreemde blaasjes op het lichaam.
De romp werd gevonden op een stortplaats. Er wordt gedacht aan een seriemoordenaar die zowel nu in Amerika als vroeger in Ierland werkzaam geweest zou zijn.
Maar dan wordt er op een eiland nog een lichaam ontdekt, een volledig lichaam ditmaal, ook bedekt met blaasjes en wonden. Reden tot paniek, want het gaat hier om een variant van het pokkenvirus, dat uitgestorven zou moeten zijn.
Het wordt een race tegen de tijd om de epidemie te stoppen, en de dader op te sporen, want nu wordt deze zaak beschouwd als terrorisme.
Het boek is wel spannend, maar de ontknoping kwam nogal abrubt, en er werd ook nooit meer melding gemaakt van het onderzoek naar de seriemoordenaar van de andere slachtoffers.
In de epiloog komt Kay eindelijk te weten wat er echt gebeurd is met haar overleden man Marc, en kan ze dit deel van haar leven eindelijk afsluiten.
Niet slecht, spannend genoeg om verder te lezen, maar Cornwell is toch niet mijn favoriete schrijfster.

A bit disappointed with this one. Was a bit confused with the flow of the story and after reading so many Patricia Cornwell novels, I dare ask, why does the ending have to be so abrupt? Cornwell is so good at weaving her stories and reaching a pleasant crescendo, but then everything goes downhill from there. Maybe a few more pages of establishing reasons and motives would make the reader even more hooked. You know, prolong the action and let Scarpetta get some more satisfaction from catching the bad guy.

It's been a long time since I read one of Patricia Cornwell's novels, featuring Medical Examiner extraordinaire, Dr. Kay Scarpetta. When I went to work recently, a fellow book-lover had left me a large bag of books, and "Unnatural Exposure" was among them. I'm glad it was.

We start off in Dublin, where Dr. Scarpetta is giving a series of lectures. Conveniently, she's also investigating a series of gruesome serial killings identical to some back in Virginia. The killer severs the head--always at the fifth cervical vertebra--and removes the arms and legs, cutting through the joints; the only things that turn up are the torsos.

Back in Virginia, Dr Scarpetta is called to a landfill, where another torso is found. At first, it seems ti fit in with the others, but Kay Scarpetta isn't convinced. The limbs and head were removed in a different manner. She runs into a wall of opposition, a bunch of reactionaries and political haymakers who want this to fit, but Kay Scarpetta follows the evidence, as well as her gut instincts.

Thoughts of the serial killer are put on the back burner when an elderly woman is found dead on an isolated fishing island. The woman has apparently died from smallpox, a virus we've eradicated from Earth.

Or have we?

Soon, Dr Scarpetta plunges headfirst into a maelstrom of epidemiologists, military brass, cops--local, state, and federal--even the U.S. Army. Her mission is to find the evil genius who grows and disseminates the virus, a psycho who taunts her via e-mail under the name "deadoc."

Like the other Kay Scarpetta novel I read, it took me a little while before I got into Patricia Cornwell's storytelling style. While this is a pretty quick read, it's not like a James Patterson novel that whips you through with short chapters and nonstop action.

Honestly, that's not a bad thing at all--I really like the way Ms Cornwell writes. She shows us the world through Kay Scarpetta's eyes. We're witness to her thoughts and brilliant professionalism, but also to her personal life and shortcomings. Dr. Scarpetta's is an interesting mind to visit.

The only reason I didn't initially give this five stars is through no fault of the novel or the novelist. It has to do with technology. A lot of "Unnatural Exposure" deals with computers, and this content--the novel hails from 1997--is understandably outdated. The killer, "deadoc," communicates via AOL on dial-up. People still carry pagers, and cellphones are unreliable and cumbersome.

I've read several older novels this year--The Magnificent Ambersons, for example--and the late 19th Century accoutrements didn't bother me. I think this is because it was from an era sufficiently removed from my own, that I could accept that as part of the fiction. I still use a cellphone, and I still use e-mail. I just have a 4G smartphone and high-speed DSL. Some of the "cutting-edge" techniques and equipment in "Unnatural Exposure" are pretty ubiquitous now.

Come to think of it, I'll give that star back. It just dawned on me that Kay Scarpetta was trying to stop a terrorist from sending deadly viruses through the mail. This was four years prior to the post-9/11 anthrax mail scares.

The scales balance, and Kay Scarpetta takes us on a wonderful ride.

#8 of the Kay Scarpetta books.

3.5 stars. An engaging, plot based, murder mystery novel. Virginia Chief Medical Examiner, Kay Scarpetta has a mystery to investigate. Five headless, limbless cadavers in Ireland and four similar victims in a landfill in Virginia, USA. Someone has plans to spread a mutant smallpox. So what is the source for the virus and the motive for the crime?

This book was first published in 1997. It is the eighth book in the Dr. Kay Scarpetta series.

A good thriller. Moves along quickly with lots of action.

This time out, Kay and her team are investing a murder that resembles another investigation involving a serial killer dismembering their victims. Little does she know the horror that lies ahead and how it will affect those around her. Good page-turner and I liked the closure she got in the epilogue regarding Mark.

Generally I liked it , more so in the beginning. Kay just about drove me crazy with her " flu".... she really should have been in quarantine with a deadly small pox on the loose that she was exposed to and she drove me crazy when she was in the hospital... she was a rotten patient. I was enjoying the mystery until it was solved.... it was like... lets tie every thing up in a nice neat bow ... in the next 2 chapters. The serial killer was not found, the Ring issue was not solved, and the death of her assistant was one sentence.

Cornwell seems to love the details of a medical examiner's chores, and I'm right there with her as Dr. Scarpetta dons gloves and haz-mat suits time and again. The buildings (and the bodies) she enters are an amazing array, some quite gristly and gruesome. She certainly gets around, often at a dizzying pace, from Richmond to a Virginia island to Memphis to Utah in an impossible Blackhawk cargo vehicle. It was fun, and fast, just to thing to read while watching well-behaved but busy grandchildren.

Two complaints: Cornwell has two gay men in this book, depicted in no judgmental way, BUT both of them are prone to crying and wringing their hands. Other than that, Keith and Wingo are ordinary enough. The other gripe is that the solution was a bit too pat, completely unexpected and even somewhat unlikely.

Still, it was a great ride, and I won't object to finding more of Cornwell on the library shelf.

I'm really enjoying each successive book in this series and the nostalgia, too - my mom, not unlike Kay Scarpetta, read these when I was growing up (cigarette and a Coke her companions).

Thoughts:

1. There are multiple gay characters with actual personalities (unlike a token queer character) and I'll never get over how progressive this would feel in a modern crime book, much less the '90s.

2. There is yet another chapter on UNIX, which will never stop being funny to me. Also an extended (and correct) description of AOL chat rooms. She manages to be cutting-edge (for the time) on technology without sounding cringy.

3. This is a book about a pandemic and I understand I'm seeing it through a current pandemic lens but WHY ARE SO MANY CHARACTERS WITH SEVERE SYMPTOMS STILL GOING TO WORK AND BREATHING ALL OVER PEOPLE. One character claims to "not be contagious anymore" but no one yet knows what the virus is or what it does??? So you don't know if you aren't contagious??? Also at one point a doctor says they don't want to give a vaccine to the elderly because "then they might get the virus." I kept getting so upset about this??

4. Also why was the author at the time - despite being queer and writing fairly smartly about queer issues in this book - a notable Republican who was pals with Bush Senior? (I think she has since changed allegiances but how can you write so correctly about the AIDS crisis and then be a Republican in the late 80s and 90s. Woof.)

Anyway, in other news, points for the audiobook reader giving the Tangier Island accent a strong go.