This is Cornwell's 13th Kay Scarpetta novel and quite frankly this one is better then the past 6 or so. No Temple Gault and company. No Wolf Man. Instead we have Edgar Allen Pogue (come on...that is pretty lame). Regardless of his name, EAP is the proverbial meek quiet employee who worked for Scarpetta till something went wrong and he is tipped over the edge of insanity bent on hurting Scarpetta.

Kay is currently living and working in Florida when she is called by the current Medical Examiner to come back to Richmond and help solve the death of a 14 year old girl. Lucy and Benton are in Colorado dealing with the after effects of an intruder attacking Lucy's latest flame and co-worker (yeah, that is smart).

Marino gets it on with the 14 year old girl's mother who has some sexual issues she deals with by taking it out on Marino. We learn about EAP's hatred for all things Scarpetta. Seems like there are an awful lot of people who have an axe to grind with Kay.

Kay is a nicer person in this book. One thing that drives me crazy though happens in this book once again. It is when Kay gets offended by others not calling her Dr. Scarpetta and instead calling her by her first name. Give me a break. How about a little humility KAY?!?!

nose si este libro tiene secuelas o es solo uno pero creo que por lo menos debería tener el final EN EL LIBRO. tipo no entendí nadaaaa. nisiquiera es como que “final abierto” jajsjsjaja NO TIEME FINAL. pero fuera de eso, es un librasoooo amo como escribe la autora es súper ligero pero te enseña algunas cosas y es bien interesante. escribe de una manera que hace que no te despegues del libro por horaaaaas y amo eso. definitivamente leería mas libros de la autora y mucho más si tienen que ver con la protagonista que améeeee porque es como una mujer superpoderosa jajajaja que sabe y hace de todo la amo.


SPOILER DEL LIBRO

no entiendo. nose si el libro tiene final??? tipo supuestamente edgar mató a la niña porque quería vengar a la anciana??? o porque vió las cochinadas que hacían los papás de la niña? pero que tenía que ver la niña. QUÉ PASÓ CON LA MAMÁ??? ósea que mas tenía para contar y porque se inventó al perro?? ptm me estresa que no expliquen eso, necesito que lo digan de manera explícita y concreta!!! y qué pasó con el papá después de la visita que le hizo lucy en el consultorio. PORQUE MIERDA TODOS TENÍAN GRIPE??? creí que edgar tenía algo que ver con eso pero nunca dijeron nadaaaaa. otra cosa, porque mato a la vieja??? si la vieja le daba todo y DONDE ESTÁ SU MAMÁ, tipo yo esperaba a que entraran a su casa y encuentres algo relacionado a su mamá porque el hablaba de ella como si estuviera viva y luego de la nada estaba muerta y sus cenizas estaban en una caja. al final que fue con lucy??? enfrentó a edgar o nada?. que le hizo marino a edgar y SU CONFESIÓNNNN NECESITO LA CONFESIÓN DE EDGAR ALLAN. scarpetta se queda con benton??? parecía que ya lo iba a volver con el. Lucy y henri???? como terminó todo eso!!!!!.

The story follow the adventures of forensic pathologist Dr Kay Scarpetta, sacked five year previously from her Chief Medical Officer position. Returning by invitation as a consultant pathologist following the mysterious death of a fifteen year old girl she and all the experts are stumped. There is no obvious cause other than that she was in bed with the flu.

This book sits as book number thirteen in the popular twenty-seven book series on Dr Kay Scarpetta, Chief Medical Examiner.

This was my first Patricia Cornwell novel so I have no other book by this author to compare it with. There were two different stories running in parallel. The first is the forensic puzzle Dr Scarpetta is trying to solve and the second involves Dr Scarpetta's niece living in a completely separate city. They are woven together such that I kept wondering how they related to each other. This was eventually revealed when the vital missing pieces of the puzzle were uncovered.

I look forward to reading more of American author Patricia Cornwell's work.

As I recounted in my review of the book after this, Predator, I checked that book out of the library thinking it might be the one about which I'd read a review saying that finally the Scarpetta series was improving again, but after realizing what a piece of tripe that work is, checked out this one instead, as I'd initially been going to do.

It started out more promising than Predator - for one thing, it began with an actual mystery! - but quickly got bogged down in Lucy's personal problems. Back when I used to voraciously read the Scarpetta series, I remember generally liking Lucy's character, but like so many of the main characters in this series, she has become less likable with age (or perhaps she'd still be likable if she were written in a better way). So many things bother me about the series now that didn't used to bug me, and I'm not sure whether they were always there and I just let them slide before because the books were generally well-written and fast-paced, or if the fact that the writing has gotten markedly worse includes these items. For one thing, in both Predator and this book, Cornwell is obsessed with "perfect" looking people, and the characters (and the narration) deride anyone that doesn't look like Cornwell's (and/or the characters') definition of "perfect." Personally I don't know a single actual real person that looks like what the books define as "perfect," and I find this obsession obnoxious.

Secondly, I'm finding Lucy's character extremely obnoxious now. In the span of two pages a bit through the book (about 100 pages in), she refers to one character as "the Hispanic" and to her father as "my crazy Latino biological father" while referring to her white mother as "Hopefully, not from my mother..." At this point, I simply lost all patience or sympathy with Lucy's character in this book, and lost even more respect for Cornwell. I can't imagine either Cornwell or Lucy saying, "the white" or "my crazy white biological mother" (indeed, her books now only cite race when the person is a person of color), but somehow it is OK to refer to a person solely or primarily by their race or ethnicity if they are a person of color. It would be different if it seemed like Cornwell was deliberately writing Lucy as a racist or Scarpetta as weight-obsessed (perhaps with an eating disorder?), but it seems that in Cornwell's new world of the novels, things like these are "just the way people act" and considered quite fine behavior.

Since Lucy's storyline makes up a huge part of this book (from what it seems so far), at this point I am trying to decide between skipping the sections with her (and the related plot with Benton and Lucy's girlfriend) and only reading the sections with Scarpetta and Marino, or just returning the book without even bothering to read the rest of it. After two disappointing books in a row, and incredibly sloppy writing, I don't believe I will be reading another Cornwell book. It's too bad, as her writing used to be gripping and I once liked the characters of Scarpetta, Benton, and Lucy (though I never was particularly fond of Marino, as was the case for many early fans).

[See my review of Predator for my evisceration of that horrendous book.:]

I like most of Patricia Cornwell novels, because of her depth of knowledge of forensics. However, I would like for her to develop her characters more. I also find her characters rather unbelievable at times.

What is up with Patricia Cornwell? Her last book, "Blow Fly", sucked and this was not much better. Same problems as the last - huge unexplained plot holes, third person perspective, undeveloped minor characters. And what's worse, the last book ended with a cliff hanger that she ignored in this one and she just started a different track! Very Irritating! Her books used to be really tight with no holes, everything wrapped up nice and neat, and she always continued the story line until the bad guy was dead. After the last one I said I was done with this author, but then I got sick and needed something easy and diverting to read in bed, but it still pissed me off. I hope she gets back on her game because she's not even good enough for a sick day anymore.

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

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 was better than her previous book, but not by much. I still think she can and should do better. On to the next.

Great book! I can’t get enough of!!!

Cornwells 13th Scarpetta novel has the Doc returning to Richmond with ex detective Marino and the scene of her unceremonious firing 5 years before to consult on a case in which a child has died and no one can figure out why?

Full disclosure I’m sticking with 4 stars but I’m not sure if that’s because I really loved being back in the Scarpetta universe after such a long break but I settled back into the characters like an old shoe, already looking forward to Scarpetta 14.

I'm so glad that with this book, there was a return to an engaging and interesting storyline that wasn't so far beyond belief. I found the last few books so ludicrous that they were almost irritating to read. In this book, Dr. Scarpetta is once again doing some actual morgue work and investigation. I still don't like the switch to third-person and was hoping it wasn't permanent, but Cornwell does a slightly better job with it in this book. Being written in third-person, it still feels a bit colder to me than earlier books written in first-person, but at least there wasn't as much confusion this time (and when things were unclear due to the third-person perspective, I believe it was intentional this time around). I have hope that the next books in the series will be a return to this more down-to-Earth type of storytelling instead of the downward trajectory the series had been on with the last two or three books that preceded this book.