Electrifying thriller. This book is not Kay Scarpetta, but it was entertaining reading.

I see Patricia Cornwell, and I snap up the book, started reading and knew I had read before, now I see I have read twice before. So could not remember the end. Read again. Third read so must not be too bad, Ms. Cornwell is easy to read.
Second read, must have brought it years ago.

Story line. State Investigator with a very bossy female boss, who happens to be the District Attorney is going to run for governor. She needs a case that makes her look good, therefor she pushes the Investigator to another state to open up a old case. His friends are not his friends, and murder is afoot, double dealings all around. Files go missing and lies are told.

Fast read, but not as good as the Scarpetta series,(in my opinion)

Granted, it's not a Kay Scarpetta novel. but I really felt cheated reading this book. It was short on plot, short on character development, double spaced and just not up to Cornwell's talent.

Silly me thought that perhaps, with a break from the Scarpetta series, Patricia Cornwell would have recaptured some of the writing skills that made me a fan in the first place. Sadly, I was wrong.

The characters did not seem believable, the plot was not clear and didn't make a lot of sense (I didn't even get that Win shot the guy the first few reads, I thought he had just punched him out; also, why did Sykes have to harass everyone in the middle of the night for a folder that could surely wait till morning). Even the science was bad: "And by the way, when DNA is contaminated, you don't get false positives". Okay... No tension, didn't care about the characters or who was doing what.

This was a novella masquerading as a full-sized book by virtue of very large print, a strategy that most children realise never works soon after handing in their first typed homework.

I have always enjoyed Cornwell's books. Well, that is not strictly true. In that a few years, her writing style changed. Not for the better, I think. I am not sure which novel heralded the difference. It might have been "Precinct". However, this book is so lightweight it gives the impression that it was written in peevish haste, ie she had signed a contract and the publisher was pressurising her for a product. It feels as though it is only partially written like a skeleton of the story but it does have the potential to be gripping. Neither characters or plot are fully fleshed out. The overall feel of the novel is not suspense but more anger, the novelist's, which is expressed through the main female character, Monique Lamont.Some judicious editing of this character would make her more believeable She appears to dislike and distrust those around her in particular, men. As I said, it was lightweight. I dashed through it in a few hours. When searching for it to put on my list I note that there is another volume described "At Risk pt 2). I can't help but wonder if this is a ploy by both writer and publisher to bilk more money out of her fans.

I've read almost all of Patricia Cornwell's books, and this one goes down as possibly the worst.

Picked this one up off the "library" shelf at the office, to take on holiday with me. Will abandon it where I finish it, in all likelihood.

*-*-*

Okay, I've read it now. And meh. We got off to a bad start together with the narrative written in present tense irritating me. I got over that, and was initially intrigued by the protagonist and his situation, and the premise of using new technology to solve an old case. But then the storyline diverged, and the protagonist was in one city working a new, local crime of immediate concern, and he had someone else working on the cold case in another city, and the story got really disjointed and I had difficulty following its convolutions for a time. By the time I got to the denouement, any interest or concern I felt for the characters had long disappeared; I finished the book out of curiosity to see how it ended, not because I felt any stake in the outcome.

This is my first of Cornwell's non-Kay Scarpetta novels, and I can't say it was particularly enjoyable or memorable. Which is too bad, because I really enjoyed the early Scarpetta novels.

It's been a few years since I last read one of Cornwell's books. I don't know why, because I really like her writing, and I enjoyed the series I was several books into.
Anyway, I did enjoy the story. My only complaint was how I perceived the bad guys: they were just so bad, when one who appeared to be such a nice guy until he was found out, and turned out to be the baddest of all the bad guys. Another was a sixty year old couple who were universally considered "a nice quiet people who nobody gave anyone a moment of trouble."
The final bad guy was actually a sort of a good guy who had been deceived ,but more than a little deranged. Most of the characters seemed somewhat one dimensional. And was a problem for me. But not enough to take away my enjoyment of reading this book. Plus it's the first of a two book series. I'm looking forward to reading the second one.

I didn't like this book and would have put it down without finishing it, except it is short and I was killing time. The only character I liked or found interesting was Winston's grandmother. It felt like the author couldn't decide which story she wanted to tell, so she told all of them, but told none of them well. The idea that a DA in Massachusetts would just arbitrarily decide to investigate a cold case in Tennessee struck me as absurd. And the name of the task force "At Risk" was stupid.

Bottom line: It reads like an early draft and her editor failed her.

Ms. Cornwell never disappoints in her books and in her colorful and exciting characters. Winston Garano, a Massachusetts state investigator, is the main protagonist. He has been called in to assist his boss, the District Attorney, the cold case murder investigation some twenty years ago. Garano, as the investigation proceeds, suspect that some sinister elements exists. The case has some political intrigue. The DA, as it happens, is also running for governor against the incumbent. Garano suspects that he may be well over his head on this unsolved murder mystery.

First read: 2007
Initial rating: 2/5
Initial thoughts: boo this isn't a Kay Scarpetta novel :(

I have always felt I didn't give this series a fair chance, and now eight years after I first read it I remember exactly nothing about the plot, so I'm going to re-read with the full awareness that this is a different series and it should be judged on what it is rather than what it isn't!

Re-read: May 2015
New rating: 4/5

Thoughts: This was an unusual crime novel in that the crime was almost a side plot to the action going on in the main characters personal lives. I enjoyed it a lot for the most part.

Things I didn't like; the use of present tense throughout, and the weak female characters - there was Sykes who put her own career in jeopardy to help out Win with the cold case murder just because she has a crush on him, and Monique who was horrible to Win despite everything he did for her (she did become slightly more sympathetic towards the end but it was too little too late for me).

Things I liked; fast moving plot, the main character Win was likeable and I loved his interactions with his Nana, who is a psychic. Any scenes with Miss Dog in them :)

[I just discovered that a made-for-TV movie of At Risk was released in 2010 - it only has a 4.3 rating on IMDb but it might be interesting to see how this very short novel translated to a film.]

تصنف في روايات الاثارة والبوليسية هذه اول مرة اقرأ لبتريشيا كورنويل. لم اجد ما يجذب ويستحوذ على القارئ. تدور الاحداث بين رجال تحري و ومدعي عام و متخصصين في الطب الشرعي. نائبة المدعي العام للولاية امرأة لديها طموح و توق ورغبة قوية للسلطة و قد دخلت في صراع غير علني مع المدعي العام الحالي. لذا ارادت ان تؤكد على مهاراتها و قدراتها وكفاءتها وانها الاجدر لان فترة الانخابات قريبة جداً. عينت تحري ذكي في البحث في ملابسات جريمة قتل حدثت في فترة زمنية قديمة تتجاوز الثلاثين عاما. وسبب اهتمامها هو ان المعهد الوطني في الولاية طور الية عن طريق ال الدي ان آى معرفة المجرم. وتدور الاحداث في اكثر من ولاية و تتعرض النائبة العامة لعملية اغتيال واغتصاب من شخص مجهول يكتش في النهاية ان احد العاملين في المعهد الوطني هو من ارسله للتخلص من النائبة العامة