About the Author
Patricia Cornwell is recognized as one of the world’s top bestselling crime authors with novels translated into thirty-six languages in more than 120 countries. Her novels have won numerous prestigious awards including the Edgar, Creasey, Anthony, Macavity, and the French Prix du Roman d’Aventure prize.
Beyond the Scarpetta series, Patricia has written a definitive book about Jack the Ripper and a biography and has created two more fiction series among others. Cornwell, a licensed helicopter pilot and scuba diver, actively researches the cutting-edge forensic technologies that inform her work. She was born in Miami, grew up in Montreat, NC, and now lives and works in Boston.
Follow @1pcornwell on Twitter, Visit patriciacornwell.com
About the book
Forensic pathologist Kay Scarpetta has returned to Virginia as the chief medical examiner. Finding herself the new girl in town once again after being away for many years, she’s inherited an overbearing secretary and a legacy of neglect and possible corruption.
She and her husband Benton Wesley, now a forensic psychologist with the U.S. Secret Service, have relocated to Old Town Alexandria where she’s headquartered five miles from the Pentagon in a post-pandemic world that’s been torn by civil and political unrest. Just weeks on the job, she’s called to a scene by railroad tracks where a woman’s body has been shockingly displayed, her throat cut down to the spine, and as Scarpetta begins to follow the trail, it leads unnervingly close to her own historic neighborhood.
At the same time, a catastrophe occurs in a top secret private laboratory in outer space, and at least two scientists aboard are found dead. Appointed to the highly classified Doomsday Commission that specializes in sensitive national security cases, Scarpetta is summoned to the White House Situation Room and tasked with finding out what happened. But even as she works the first crime scene in space remotely, an apparent serial killer strikes again. And this time, Scarpetta could be in greater danger than ever before.
Review
It wasn't until I read which number this is in the Scarpetta series that I realised just how long I have been reading books by this particular author. I must have missed a few because I was a wee bit surprised by the Marino and Kay's sister coupling. I know his almost obsessive need to protect and to be in Kay's orbit is a main driver, but her sister can be such ego driven being. Surely that counts as dysfunctional.
Is the obsessive close friendship only viewed as a positive, because Kay is unable to take a step back from it, as opposed to an outsider thinking Marino is on the precipice of something screwy in regards to his friend? Is that a book waiting to happen.
Kay has been more or less manipulated into the career move she has made recently. I think the full picture and repercussions of said move will be fodder for this and some books to come. I actually found Scarpetta's lack of response to the negative attitudes, blatant disregard for her position, was infuriating. Where was her outrage instead of just letting certain people just dance on her grave?
I'm not sure whether the last few years have anything to do with it, but it certainly seemed as if there was a lot going on in this book, perhaps to the detriment of the book. The serial killer plot, the White House situation, her professional status and the way her niece is dealing with a personal loss. Many sub-plots pulling in a lot of different directions, then again some of it felt a little like a build-up to a bigger plot.
It's certainly a gripping read, albeit it one that bounces from one goal post to the other. I am hoping in the next book Kay comes back willing to fight with a bit more vigor.
Buy Autopsy at Amazon Uk or go to Goodreads for any other retailer. Publisher : HarperCollins pub date 25 Nov. 2021. Buy at Amazon com. Buy at Harper Collins Uk.
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