Readers' rating:
Published in USA
Oct 2009
512 pages
Genre: Thrillers
Publication Information
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.
"[I]t's the dark past of Scarpetta's psychologist husband, Benton Wesley....that binds the disparate pieces together and make this one of Cornwell's stronger recent efforts." - Publishers Weekly
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New York Times bestselling novelist Patricia Daniels Cornwell is the
only woman in the United States to receive England's coveted Gold Dagger,
widely considered to be the most prestigious crime-writing award in the world.
A former award-winning police reporter for the Charlotte Observer,
Cornwell worked for more than six years as a computer analyst in the chief
medical examiner's office in Virginia, where she witnessed hundreds of
autopsies and even assisted as a "scribe," recording the measurements of the
wounds of murder victims. During that time, she also was a volunteer with the
Richmond Police Department, and has spent time with law enforcement around the
world.
Those experiences inspired her to create Dr. Kay Scarpetta, a tenacious chief
medical examiner who tracks ...
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