About the Author

Since the first novel was published in 1990, Patricia Cornwell and her creation, Kay Scarpetta, have become household names and she has earned widespread critical acclaim. She helped to establish the Virginia Institute of Forensic Science and Medicine and serves as Chairman of the Board.Author Location: Virginia and New York.Scarpetta Novels incl: Postmortem/Body of Evidence/All That Remains/Cruel and Unusual/Body Farm/From Potter's Field/Cause of Death/Unnatural Exposure/Point of Origin/Black Notice/Last Precinct/Blow Fly/Trace/Predator

Reviews

Gruesome but brilliant. - Antonia FraserThe pace is terrific. - OBSERVERThis is Cornwell's 12th novel featuring pathologist/detetctive Scarpetta and it's every bit as tense and disturbing as the first. POSTMORTEM. - DAILY EXPRESSA tremendous read. - SUNDAY TELEGRAPH

Gruesome but brilliant. - Antonia FraserThe pace is terrific. - OBSERVERThis is Cornwell's 12th novel featuring pathologist/detetctive Scarpetta and it's every bit as tense and disturbing as the first. POSTMORTEM. - DAILY EXPRESSA tremendous read. - SUNDAY TELEGRAPH

"Please don't go there. The past is the past," sighs New York Assistant District Attorney Jaime Berger, who herself was introduced in Cornwell's last Kay Scarpetta novel, The Last Precinct (2000). Alas, many of Cornwell's fans are bound to agree. One fascinating nonfiction bestseller (Portrait of a Killer: Jack the Ripper, Case Closed) later, Cornwell now returns to Scarpetta, formerly Virginia's chief medical examiner. From the start, however, the formidable author is up against the equally formidable task of getting her charismatic main character off ice and back in action. We encounter Scarpetta languishing in a crumbling little rental house in Florida. She has taken refuge there and become a private forensic consultant after she was driven from her job for her alleged involvement in the murder of a deputy police chief. The violent death of her lover, Benton Wesley, the brilliant FBI psychological profiler, has left her filled with an unappeasable grief. When the coroner in Baton Rouge asks her advice on a cold case concerning an affluent woman found dead of a drug overdose in a seedy hotel, it seems little more than a diversion. Yet it becomes clear that the overdose may be related to a fresh string of serial killings. Also disturbing Scarpetta's somber peace is a troubling letter from someone out to kill her, the sick and obsessed death-row inmate Jean-Baptiste. When Scarpetta is at last allowed to get back to business, she is a feisty, independent powerhouse whose capacity to concentrate and observe rivals Sherlock Holmes's. But too much of this book is bound up in retrospective musings about events in previous books. The great Scarpetta, her fiery crime-busting niece, Lucy, and a colorful supporting cast deserve better. 1,000,000 first printing; Literary Guild, Doubleday Book Club and Mystery Guild main selections; foreign sales to Finland, France, Germany, Holland, Italy, Japan, Spain and the U.K.. (Oct. 13) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.