Have You Read
Patricia Cornwell
 
 
Postmortem 1990
 A serial killer is on the loose in Richmond, Virginia. Three women have died, brutalized and strangled in their own bedrooms. There is no pattern: the killer appears to strike at random - but always early on Saturday mornings. So when Dr Kay Scarpetta, chief medical examiner, is awakened at 2.33 am, she knows the news is bad: there is a fourth victim, and she fears now for those that will follow unless she can dig up new forensic evidence to aid the police. But not everyone is pleased to see a woman in this powerful job. Someone may even want to ruin her career and reputation...
Body Of Evidence 1991
 Someone is stalking Beryl Madison. Someone who spies on her and makes threatening, obscene phone calls. Terrified, Beryl flees to Key West - but eventually she must return to her Richmond home. The very night she arrives, Beryl inexplicably invites her killer in. Thus begins for Dr Key Scarpetta the investigation of a crime that is as convoluted as it is bizarre. Why would Beryl open the door to someone who brutally slashed and then neatly decapitated her? Did she know her killer? Adding to the intrigue is Beryl's enigmatic relationship with a prizewinning author and the disappearance of her own manuscript. As Scarpetta retraces Beryl's footsteps, an investigation that begins in the laboratory with microscopes and lasers leads her deep into a nightmare that soon becomes her own.
All That Remains 1992
 A killer is stalking young loners. Taking their lives ... and leaning just one tantalizing clue … When the bodies of young courting couples start turning up in remote woodland areas, Dr Kay Scarpetta's task as chief medical examiner is made more difficult by the effects of the elements. Eight times she must write that the cause of death is undetermined. But when the latest girl to go missing turns out to be the daughter of one of the most powerful women in America, Kay finds herself homey to political pressure and press harassment. As she starts to investigate, she finds that vital evidence is being withheld from her - or even faked. And all the time a cunning sadistic killer is still at large..

Cruel And Unusual 1993
 At 11.05 one December evening in Richmond, Virginia, convicted murderer Ronnie Joe Waddell is pronounced dead in the electric chair. At the morgue Dr Kay Scarpetta waits for Waddell’s body. preparing to perform post mortem before the subject is dead is s strange feeling, but Scarpetta has been here before. And Waddell’s death is not the only newsworthy event on this freezing night: the grotesquely wounded body of a young boy is found propped against a rubbish skip. To Scarpetta the two cases seem unrelated, until she recalls that the body of Waddell’s victim had been arranged in a strikingly similar position. Then a third murder is discovered, the most puzzling of all. The crime scene yields very few clues: old blood stains, fragments of feather, and - most baffling - a bloody fingerprint that points to the one suspect who could not possibly have committed the murder.

The Body Farm 1994
 Black Mountain, North Carolina - a sleepy little town where the local police deal with one homicide a year, if they’re unlucky, and where people are still getting used to the idea of locking their doors at night. Hardly the place for a serial killer to be stalking, but that seems the most likely scenario when the corpse of eleven-year-old Emily Steiner is found, with a bullet wound to the head and several small sections of skin removed from her frail and abused body. The execution of the crime bears disturbing similarities to the recent murder of young Eddie Heath in Virginia, and Dr Kay Scarpetta, the Chief Medical Examiner on that case, is called in to bring her forensic skills to bear on this latest atrocity. Fighting the natural assumption that Emily’s murderer is also the man who killed Eddie, Scarpetta’s instinct for the unusual is rudely awakened when another body is found - a local cop who was working on the Steiner case but becomes a suspect himself when the missing pieces of Emily’s skin are found in hid freezer. But it’s all a little too neat for Scarpetta. The angles have to be covered, and just because the prime suspect is dead doesn’t mean the case is closed…
From Potters Field 1995
 Christmas has never been a particularly good time for Dr Kay Scarpetta. Although a holiday for most, the festivities always seem to heighten the alienation felt by society's violent fringe; and that usually means more work for Scarpetta, Virginia's Chief Medical Examiner and consulting forensic pathologist for the FBI. The body was naked female, and found propped against a fountain in a bleak area of New York's Central Park. Her apparent manner of death points to a modus operendi that is chillingly familiar: the gunshot wound to the head the sections of skin excised from the body, the displayed corpse - all suggest that Temple Brooks Gault, Scarpetta's nemesis, is back at work. But this time Gault isn't satisfied with indiscriminate murder. As Scarpetta scrapes together the meager clues he leaves behind she realizes his actions are becoming more focused taunting almost; letting her know he's still out there, still killing. The sabotage of the FBl's database computer - a computer programmed and run by Scarpetta's niece Lucy - no longer seems coincidental, and with other insidious encroachments into her private life Scarpetta faces a terrifying truth: that this time, the price of failure could be personal. Calling on all her reserves of courage and skill, and the able assistance of colleagues Marine and Wesley, Scarpetta must track this most dangerous of killers in pursuit of survival as well as justice heading inexorably to an electrifying climax amid the dark, menacing labyrinths of the New York subway.

Cause Of Death 1996
 New Year's Eve and the final murder scene of Virginia's bloodiest year takes Scarpetta thirty feet below the Elizabeth River's icy surface. A diver, Ted Eddings, is dead an investigative reporter who was a favorite at the Medical Examiner's office. Was Eddings probing the frigid depths of the Inactive Shipyard for a story, or simply diving for sunken trinkets? And why did Scarpetta receive a phone call from someone reporting the death before the police were notified? The case envelops Scarpetta, her niece Lucy, and police captain Pete Marine in a world where both cutting-edge technology and old-fashioned detective work are critical offensive weapons. Together they follow the trail of death to a well of violence as dark and forbidding as the water that swirled over Ted Eddings.

Hornets Nest 1996
 Violence is swarming in Charlotte, and Deputy Chief Virginia West has a mood to match. Another out-of-town businessman has been found murdered, a wise-ass detective has taken her parking slot, and her boss is telling her to go out on patrol as escort to a young reporter
Unnatural Exposure 1997
 Dublin, Ireland and Richmond Virginia: separated by thousands of miles - linked by murder. For Dr Kay Scarpetta a lecture stint in Ireland provides the perfect opportunity to find out if the murders on both sides of the Atlantic are indeed connected. Five dismembered beheaded bodies were found in Ireland years ago - now four have been discovered in the States. But the tenth corpse in Virginia is different. There are vital discrepancies, and an indication that the elderly victim was already seriously ill. A copycat killing. Goulish, perhaps, but not unusual. And then abject terror grips Scarpetta and her colleagues when the next body is found. The circumstances of death broadcast a clear and horrifying message: the killer is armed with the most lethal weapon on earth - smallpox.
Point Of Origin 1998
 Dr Kay Scarpetta, Chief Medical Examiner and consulting forensic pathologist for the federal law enforcement agency ATF, is called out to a farmhouse in Virginia which has been destroyed by fire. In the ruins of the house she finds a body which tells a story of violent and grisly murder. The fire has come at the same time as another, even more incendiary horror: Carrie Grethen, a killer who nearly destroyed the lives of Scarpetta and those closest to her, has escaped from a forensic psychiatric hospital. Her whereabouts is unknown, but her ultimate destination is not, for Carrie has begun to communicate
Black Notice 1999
 The nightmare begins when a cargo ship arriving at Richmond's Deep Water Terminal from Belgium is discovered to be transporting a locked, sealed container holding the decomposed remains of a stowaway. The autopsy performed by Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Kay Scarpetta initially reveals neither a cause of death nor an identification. But the victim's personal effects and an odd tattoo take Scarpetta on a hunt for information that leads to INTERPOL's headquarters in Lyon, France, where she receives critical instructions: go to the Paris morgue to receive forbidden, secret evidence and then return to Virginia to carry out a mission. It is a mission that could ruin her career.

Southern Cross 1999
 Featuring the fast-moving adventures of Richmond's police department. Judy Hammer has been hired with the brief to bring sanity and order to a city in escalating chaos. Aided by her Deputy, Virginia West, and Andy Brazil, now a full-time police officer, she faces the most difficult assignment of her career. Not only do the established police force resent their presence, the city's institutions have over-high expectations of the new team. Their work to eradicate teenage gangs, prevent the robberies from cash dispensers and the in-fighting inside the department comes to a shuddering halt when a virus invades the police computer system. Their screens are frozen into an image of blue fish. The same blue fish also appears on the statue of Jefferson Davis which dominates the city's cemetery. The once-proud statue has been transformed by graffiti into a black basketball player with the number 12 on his jersey. A gang called the Pikes claim it is their symbol - the same gang who are probably involved the robberies taking place all over the city.

The Last Precinct 2000
 When Kay Scarpetta is mandated to investigate the four hundred-year-old violent death of one of America's first settlers at Jamestown, Virginia, it seems like the perfect match: modern technology's savviest avatar versus an age-old crime. Kay's involvement in the case attracts headlines, and more - the unwelcome ire of a person or persons unknown. Kay and those closest to her soon find themselves the targets of vicious hate crimes that are clearly inspired by her connection to the archaeological excavation. At first more nuisance than assault, the nature of the attacks quickly escalates to violence. Worse still, those sworn to protect prove to be the enemy, forcing Scarpetta, her niece Lucy, and detective Peter Marino to take matters into their own hands - torquing the rule of law and changing their lives forever
Isle Of Dogs 2001
 Chaos breaks loose when the governor of Virginia orders that speed traps be painted on all streets and highways, warning that speeders will be caught by monitoring aircraft flying overhead. But the eccentric Isle of Tangier, fourteen miles off the coast of Virginia in the Chesapeake Bay, responds by declaring war on its own state. Judy Hammer, newly installed as the superintendent of the Virginia State Police, and Andy Brazil, a state trooper and Hammer's right hand and confidant, find themselves at their wits' end as they try to protect the public from the politicians-and vice versa-in this pitch-perfect, darkly comic romp.

The Blow Fly 2003
 Dr Kay Scarpetta has left Virginia in quest of peace but instead finds herself drawn into baffling, horrific murders in Florida, where she becomes entangled in an international conspiracy that confronts her with the shock of her life. 'All of Cornwell's books run on high octane fuel, a cocktail of adrenalin and fear . such is her grip on her audience and such is her ability to suck you into her hermetic, claustrophobic world that Scarpetta's tension becomes the reader's. Her fear is contagious, her adrenaline levels boost your own.' The Times
Trace 2004
 Since Postmortem garnered critical acclaim and a record-breaking five awards for a first crime novel, the Scarpetta novels have often been imitated, but never bettered. Blow Fly saw the world famous medical examiner forced out of Virginia, the media harassing her at every turn, and the serial killer, Chandonne, determined to break the woman who put him behind bars. It also brought Benton Wesley back into her life, her lover and soulmate whose supposed death had left her bereft and alone. Now she is revitalised and determined to regain control of her professional life. She is called back to Virginia where she had been chief medical examiner to work on the investigation into the dark, lonely death of a 14-year- old girl. Scarpetta follows a trail too feint for the human eye to see but which eventually leads to a truth that may be more than she can bear.
Predator 2005
 Kay Scarpetta and her colleagues-Benton Wesley, Pete Marino, and her niece Lucy Farinelli-return to a series of forensic cases as haunting as any they have ever tackled. Working with the National Forensic Institute in Florida, Scarpetta and Marino examine the X-rays of a man who has died from a shotgun blast to the chest. But the pellets embedded show a strange 'pinball' pattern and the two can't help but wonder if this points to suicide-or to murder.

In an abandoned house in the rural South, a woman is held against her will. Her captor is unknown to her-and indeed unseen-but even in the dark, she knows that he is near. And on Cape Cod, Lucy awakens to a gray winter morning and the sure feeling that she has made a dreadful mistake.

At Risk 2006
Book Of The Dead 2007
 The "book of the dead" is the morgue log, the ledger in which all cases are entered by hand. For Kay Scarpetta, however, it is about to have a new meaning. Fresh from her bruising battle with a psychopath in Florida, Scarpetta decides it's time for a change of pace-not only personally and professionally, but geographically. Moving to the historic city of Charleston, South Carolina, she opens a unique private forensic pathology practice, one in which she and her colleagues-including Pete Marino and her niece, Lucy-offer expert crime-scene investigation and autopsies to communities that lack local access to competent death investigation and modern technology.

It seems like an ideal situation, until the new battles start-with local politicians, with entrenched interests, with someone whose covert attempts at sabotage are clearly meant to run her out of town. And that's even before the murders and other violent deaths begin.

A young man from a well-known family jumps off a water tower. A woman is found ritualistically murdered in her multi-million-dollar beach home. The body of an abused young boy is discovered dumped in a desolate marsh. Meanwhile, in distant New England, problems with a prominent patient at a Harvard-affiliated psychiatric hospital begin to hint at interconnections that are as hard to imagine as they are horrible.

Scarpetta has dealt with many brutal and unusual crimes before, but never a string of them as baffling, or as terrifying, as the ones that face her now. Before she is through, that book of the dead will contain many names-and the pen may be poised to write her own.

The first name in forensics. The last name in suspense. Once again, Patricia Cornwell proves her exceptional ability to entertain and enthrall.

Scarpetta 2009
Leaving behind her private forensic pathology practice in Charleston, South Carolina, Kay Scarpetta accepts an assignment in New York City, where the NYPD has asked her to examine an injured man on Bellevue Hospital's psychiatric prison ward. The handcuffed and chained patient, Oscar Bane, has specifically asked for her, and when she literally has her gloved hands on him, he begins to talk - and the story he has to tell turns out to be one of the most bizarre she has ever heard.

The injuries, he says, were sustained in the course of a murder . . . that he did not commit. Is Bane a criminally insane stalker who has fixed on Scarpetta? Or is his paranoid tale true, and it is he who is being spied on, followed and stalked by the actual killer? The one thing Scarpetta knows for certain is that a woman has been tortured and murdered - and more violent deaths will follow. Gradually, an inexplicable and horrifying truth emerges: Whoever is committing the crimes knows where his prey is at all times. Is it a person, a government? And what is the connection between the victims?

In the days that follow, Scarpetta; her forensic psychologist husband, Benton Wesley; and her niece, Lucy, who has recently formed her own forensic computer investigation firm in New York, will undertake a harrowing chase through cyberspace and the all-too-real streets of the city - an odyssey that will take them at once to places they never knew, and much, much too close to home.

Throughout, Cornwell delivers shocking twists and turns, and the kind of cutting-edge technology that only she can provide. Once again, she proves her exceptional ability to entertain and enthrall.

Scarpetta Factor 2009
It is the week before Christmas. A tanking economy has prompted Dr. Kay Scarpetta - despite her busy schedule and her continuing work as the senior forensic analyst for CNN - to offer her services pro bono to New York City's Office of the Chief Medical Examiner. In no time at all, her increased visibility seems to precipitate a string of unexpected and unsettling events. She is asked live on the air about the sensational case of Hannah Starr, who has vanished and is presumed dead. Moments later during the same telecast she receives a startling call-in from a former psychiatrist patient of Benton Wesley's. When she returns after the show to the apartment where she and Benton live, she finds an ominous package - possibly a bomb - waiting for her at the front desk. Soon the apparent threat on Scarpetta's life finds her embroiled in a surreal plot that includes a famous actor accused of an unthinkable sex crime and the disappearance of a beautiful millionaires with whom Lucy seems to have shared a secret past.

Scarpetta's CNN producer wants her to launch a TV show called The Scarpetta Factor. Given the bizarre events already in play, she fears that her growing fame will generate the illusion that she has a 'special factor,' a mythical ability to solve all her cases. She wonders if she will end up like other TV personalities: her own stereotype.

The Scarpetta Factor, the seventeenth in the series, finds the familiar cast of characters together again in New York. Marino is working for the NYPD; Benton Wesley uses his forensic psychological expertise at Kirby and Bellevue; and Lucy continues to dazzle with her expertise in forensic computer investigations as she works yet another case with NY prosecutor Jaime Berger.

Port Mortuary 2010
Port Mortuary, the title of Patricia Cornwell's 18th Scarpetta novel, is literally a port for the dead. In this fast-paced story, a treacherous path from Scarpetta's past merges with the high tech highway she now finds herself on. We travel back to the beginning of her professional career, when she enlisted in the Air Force to pay off her medical school debt and found herself ensnared in a gruesome case of what seemed to be vicious, racially motivated hate crimes against two Americans in South Africa. Now, more than twenty years and many career successes later, her secret military ties have drawn her to Dover Air Force Base, where she has been immersed in a training fellowship to master the art of CT-assisted virtual autopsy--a procedure the White House has mandated that she introduce in the private sector.

As the chief of the new Cambridge Forensic Center in Massachusetts, a joint venture of the state and federal governments and MIT, Scarpetta is confronted with a case that could shut down her new facility and ruin her personally and professionally. A young man drops dead, apparently from a cardiac arrhythmia, eerily close to Scarpetta's new Cambridge home. But when his body is examined the next morning, there are stunning indications that he may have been alive when he was zipped inside a pouch and locked insider the Center's cooler. Various 3-D radiology scans reveal more shocking details about internal injuries unlike any Scarpetta has ever seen. These suggest the possibility of a conspiracy to cause mass casualties. She realizes that she is fighting a cunning and cruel enemy that is invisible as she races against time to discover who and why before more people die.

In Port Mortuary, Patricia Cornwell brings Scarpetta together with Marino, Benton, and Lucy in an intimate way that is reminiscent of the early novels, and we welcome a voice we haven't heard in years. The point of view is Scarpetta's, and this is her story.

 
Join Evening Stories On Facebook
Add This Author To My Personal e mail
Advise Me On Books You Have Available By This Author Used
Advise Me On Books Still In Print By This Author New
Name
e mail
Remarks