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Book Summary and Reviews of Book of the Dead by Patricia Cornwell

Book of the Dead by Patricia Cornwell

Book of the Dead

Kay Scarpetta, No. 15

by Patricia Cornwell

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  • Published:
  • Oct 2007, 416 pages
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About this book

Book Summary

The "book of the dead" is the morgue log, a ledger in which all cases are entered by hand. For Kay Scarpetta, however, it is about to take on 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 autopsy services to communities lacking local access to modern, competent death investigation t

And that's before the murders and other violent deaths even begin: A young man from a well-known family jumps off a water tower. A woman is found ritualistically murdered in her multimillion-dollar beach home. The body of an abused young boy is discovered dumped in a desolate marsh. Kay Scarpetta has dealt with many brutal and unusual crimes before, but never a string of them as baffling, or as terrifying, as the ones confronting her now.

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Reviews

Media Reviews

"[T]he abrupt shifts in point of view slow the momentum, and the reader flounders in excessive forensic minutiae. " - Publishers Weekly.

"What's most distinctive about this venerable franchise is the kitchen-sink plotting; the soap-opera melodrama that prevents any given volume from coming to a satisfying end; and the emphasis on titanic battles between Scarpetta and a series of Antichrists. Proceed at your own risk. " - Kirkus Reviews.

This information about Book of the Dead was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.

Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.

Reader Reviews

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Emee

Book of the dead
I did not enjoy this book. Its all over the place, difficult to keep track of the story line. I also did not enjoy how the good detective was turned into a drunken, weak scoundrel.

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Author Information

Patricia Cornwell Author Biography

Patricia Cornwell is a #1 New York Times bestselling author and widely considered one of the world's top crime writers. In 1990, Patricia Cornwell sold her first novel, Postmortem, while working at the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner in Richmond, Virginia. An auspicious debut, it went on to win the Edgar, Creasey, Anthony, and Macavity Awards, as well as the French Prix du Roman d'Aventures—the first book ever to claim all these distinctions in a single year. Growing into an international phenomenon, the Scarpetta series won Cornwell the Sherlock Award for best detective created by an American author, the Gold Dagger Award, the RBA Thriller Award, and the Medal of Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters for her contributions to literary and artistic development. Today, ...

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