At one time, her Kay Scarpetta books were some of the best mystery/thriller fiction around... and then they grew dark & nasty & mean - and I stopped reading them.

Since the "At Risk" series meant a new set of characters and a possible fresh start, I gave both of the books a try this weekend. I'm sad to report that the books read like TV pilot proposals: the sexy ice queen prosecutor with political ambitions who bosses around the good-looking African-American detective hero. The hero has relationships with "broken" women who help him solve cold cases. Politics always interferes with crime-solving... and illicit sex (with a minor, rape, etc.) always manages to appear.

From a more "nuts & bolts" perspective, the books develop too quickly as they're shoehorned into 200 pages in a reduced size format - meaning each one of them is about 1/2 a novel in length.

Patricia Cornwell is a better writer than this... go back to her earlier work instead of bothering with these two books.

I kept checking to see if this was an abridgement! I hate abridgements! Little character development. A real disappointment.

Whilst I enjoyed this book it was not the best that I have read from this author. The story revolves around an old case that is being reopened to highlight and showcase new technology in forensic science and to help the election hopes of a woman district attorney. The old case turns out to be the backstory. The DA is raped and an attempt is made to murder her and the detective she brought in to review and solve the old case then effectively takes on the two cases. The reason for the attempted murder is sniffed out at the end of the novel and the old case is cleared up too. The character of Winston Garano ( Win ) is developed reasonably well but still only a 4 star from me.

IT is nothing special. The present tense grates annoyingly, the characters are not engaging enough to invest me, and forensics? what forensics?

Het risico is géén Kay Scarpetta-verhaal. Zo, de kop is er af. De hoofdpersonen in dit verhaal zijn rechercheur Winston Garano en openbaar aanklager Monique Lamont. Winston is zeer getalenteerd en daarom enige tijd geleden door Monique naar Knoxville in Tennessee gezonden om een extra opleiding te volgen aan de 'National Forensic Academy'. Vlak voor het eind van deze opleiding roept Monique Winston plotseling terug naar een regenachtig Boston. Ze vertelt hem dat ze in het kader van haar nieuwe programma 'At Risk', dat inhoudt dat geen misdaad ongestraft mag blijven, een speciale opdracht heeft voor Winston. Hij moet een 'cold case' gaan onderzoeken, de moord op een rijke vrouw. Waar heeft die moord plaatsgevonden? In Knoxville, Tennessee. En wanneer? Al ruim twintig jaar geleden. Winston begrijpt er niets van, behalve dan van het feit dat Monique dit foefje uithaalt om in een beter blaadje te komen bij haar kiezers. Monique wil namelijk graag gouverneur worden. Wie haar daarvoor in de weg staat is echter de huidige gouverneur, en wie haar helpt is ene Huber, hoofd van een forensisch laboratorium.
Het verhaal rond de moord op de oude dame is deze keer, in tegenstelling tot de latere Kay Scarpetta-verhalen, 'klein' gehouden. Alles speelt zich af in het tijdbestek van een paar dagen en er wordt ook niet zo overdreven veel heen en weer gereisd. Wat natuurlijk onbegrijpelijk blijft is het gemachineer van die Amerikaanse overheids'dienaren' die allemaal zo verschrikkelijk graag steeds hogerop willen klimmen. Ook Monique Lamont is zo'n overheidsdienaar die meer oog heeft voor de verkiezingen dan voor het werk dat ze eigenlijk zou moeten doen: misdadigers aanklagen. Winston is een aardige hardwerkende rechercheur die echter ook niet altijd weet wat hij met Monique aan moet. Rust vindt hij bij zijn oude grootmoeder, wat de noodzakelijke luchtige inbreng geeft in het boek.
De plot is in dit redelijk dunne boek (180 pagina's met groot lettertype) uiteindelijk toch wel interessant, al kost het de lezer wel weer wat moeite om de kronkels in het verhaal glad te strijken en uit te vinden wie wie is en wie wat doet. Met een scherpe pen geschreven maar toch niet echt diepgaand, is dit boek een aardig uurtje vermaak maar het brengt niet de verwondering en het ontzag van de eerdere boeken van Cornwell.

too short, maybe?

p82: nana is asleep on the couch, in her long, black robe, her long, white hair loose and splayed over the cushion, clint eastwood on the tv, making somebody’s day with his big, bad gun.

Patricia Cornwell was once one of my favorite authors, and I took any opportunity to purchase her books wherever I found them, certain that I would read them all, in order, over time. Sadly, she is no longer writing anywhere near the level she once had, and this is the last of her books I will ever purchase or read. In fact, I read it only because it was already on my shelf, and I hated to think I spent the money and never opened it.

At Risk is the first in Cornwell’s Winston Garano series (there are two so far). Best known for her Kay Scarpetta novels, and less for her Andy Brazil series, this new venture is, inarguably, her worst work ever. If you’ve read my review of her Isle of Dogs (Andy Brazil #3), then you know that is saying a lot!

As are her last several books, At Risk is written in a very distracting and unprofessional present tense. I found myself several times having to go back and reread passages that made no sense due to this annoyance. Imagine, if you will, trying to listen to a “Valley Girl” telling a story, and you’ll understand the feeling.

Story wise, At Risk is 212 page skeletal examination of the police work of Winston Garano, sometimes called Win, sometimes Geronimo. He’s a Detective with the Massachusetts State Police, assigned to the DA’s office in Boston. He’s a self-loathing wunderkind from the wrong part of Boston who wears top name fashions such as Hugo Boss and Prada, that he buys second hand at the thrift stores and constantly ruminates that he failed to get into Harvard like the rich kids.

He’s been on assignment at the National Forensics Academy in Knoxville, Tennessee, but his boss, the egomaniacal Monique Lamont has summoned him back early to investigate a case she is certain will land her the Governor’s office. As part of her new program which she calls “At Risk” she has decided that the best way to get additional funding for the new state forensics lab, as well as make her a shoe-in politically, is to put Win on a 20 year old cold case. A cold case that took place in another state. Knoxville, Tennessee, to be specific.

Never mind that a Massachusetts DA has no authority to investigate a case from out of state. Never mind that she has called Win BACK from Knoxville to tell him about the case. Never mind that any public official who so grossly misused their office and the public’s money like this would be stoned in the town square. Leave all reality and logic and common sense aside; this is still a terrible story told in the worst possible, hurried and assuming fashion.

At Risk reads like an outline for a story proposal, not a fully thought out manuscript. The characters are as thin as paper, and I often had to look back to see who Cornwell was talking about as she would refer to them by first name one moment and last name the next. You never get to actually care about any of them, though Monique Lamont comes close to being as detestable as she can in such a poor telling. I found Lamont annoying because she was a mean bitch, not because she was a well constructed antagonist. There is very little back story on any of them, and when a bit is tossed in here and there, it seems like another distraction; the flyer stuck under your windshield wiper that you forgot to remove before you began driving.

I am seriously saddened by the decline of Cornwell’s writing. Her first nine Scarpetta novels were excellent, deeply researched, and masterfully constructed. From Postmortem, right up to Black Notice, she wove intricate, albeit dark tales with vivid characters and detailed settings. After that, her writing style changed drastically and her stories fell apart in ever increasing chaos. From Mona Lisa to a kindergartener’s crayon drawings.

I still highly recommend her early work, but anything written after about 1999 will disappoint. Don’t bother with the Win Garano or the Andy Brazil books at all.

My first-ever Patricia Cornwall and likely my last.* This book was rough, y'all. As in, it's hard to believe anyone edited this book at all and also I guess who cares when you're as successful a writer as Cornwall is? 

It's a perpetually sad reality (in life and in publishing): The more "famous" someone gets, the less likely they have people around them telling them any semblance of the truth. 

I imagine at multiple stages in her career and with how prolific she's been for so many years that Cornwall uses a bevy of ghostwriters [and likely probably did back in 2006 when this was first published?], but honestly, it doesn't matter. The writing is terrible, whoever wrote it, and the dialogue is some of the lamest and most confusingly written I've ever encountered, even for a book vying for mass-market paperback status. 

You'd think a woman-hating man wrote this drivel, but: nope. Ugh. Anyway. Life is too short to spend more time writing this review, and thankfully there are so many better books out there to read. 

*Unless I decide to read one of her TWENTY-FOUR Kay Scarpetta novels (plenty of reviewers said those early books were much stronger and much better written); we'll see. 

[1 star for being a book I could finish in an afternoon.]

This is only the second book by Patricia Cornwell that I have read. The first was from her Kay Scarpetta series, and I throughly enjoyed that book. I was excited to get into this series, but I have to say that after reading the first book it just doesn’t seem to be from the same author.
The first few chapters had my attention, and then the momentum sort of fizzles out. There’s a lack of twists and turns in the plot, and the characters are all over the place. The storyline almost feels forced. Maybe the more books in the series you read the more things come together. Unfortunately, for me I will stick to the Scarpetta series.

At Risk

Yeah, at risk of feeling like you’re having a stroke because the sentence structure/writing style, a dialogue are just that bad.
I got this book from one of those free libraries people have in their yards. When I opened it up, there was an orange sticky note: “What do you think makes a story good? What’s your favorite story? -Ruth”. All the books I got from that library had notes from Ruth. Ruth, if you’re reading this: I love you, and thanks for the subtle warning

Well so begins my introduction to Patricia Cornwell - I will admit I am not sure if there is a "starting point" in her work or even if this is part of a larger series - I should really do some research but as a randomly picked book to try I did enjoy this - I did feel in places, especially the start that I was watching a story unfold I was not necessarily invited to watch - and that I was in fact as a result only seeing snippets of what was really going on. However as confusing as it felt at times it did all fall in to place - and even the early blocks and points of confusion were explained if rather suddenly and rushed at the end. This was an interesting read more than a fun one - it certainly has not put me off her work but I do feel I should have read her work starting with something else.

Da una parte, per mia fortuna, questo non era uno dei romanzi della Cornwell che mi ero letto a suo tempo dopo averla scoperta con Postmortem e mi risultava quindi come nuovo. Dall'altra però questa tendenza a ripubblicare nei Gialli da edicola, nella collana principale, testi che hanno avuto già una lunga vita in altre edizioni mi suona un po' come raschiare il fondo del barile. Recuperare da catalogo senza avere il coraggio di chiamarli "classici" perché tali non sono.
Inoltre ho come l'impressione che in questa edizione un romanzo già breve per i canoni dei thriller americani sia stato ulteriormente scorciato. Ci sono fatti che appaiono improvvisamente acquisiti senza che se ne sia accennato prima e non tutti possono essere imputati all'intelligenza superiore del protagonista.