What readers think of Blow Fly, plus links to write your own review.

This is the only Cornwell book I have read and I found it very poor and at times incomprehensible. For instance the Werewolf is supposed to be blind, but is still able to do brilliant calligraphy. Meandering disjointed plot, and a ridiculous sudden ending, almost like the author had reached her contractual page count and had had enough and so terminated it all abruptly. I doubt if I'd bother to read another. In fact I wasn't even sure if P. Cornwell was a real person or just for a fictitious name thought up by a committee that cranked out this kind of fiction because it reminded so much of the style of the one Dean Koontz I've read, but according to Wiki she does exist, which makes it even stranger that this book was so bad. I was very disappointed with this book because I had expected a lot more and had been led to believe she was really good.

I have so enjoyed previous Scarpetta stories. I felt that Blow Fly however, went off in too many plotlines without doing any of them justice. There was too much going on in a shallow sense, none of it really deepened into situation thats would heighten suspense. It was a big disappointment. However, I willl naturally buy the next Scarpetta novel because I have thoroughly enjoyed her character in the past.

In my opinion this book is good, but only as a stand-alone and not as part of a series.

As an installment in a serial, there are too many inconsistencies in the events reported in earlier installements versus how those same events are represented here.

Also there is a shift from the 1rst person perspective to the 3rd person. Perhaps it is meant as a vehicle though encouraging the reader to feel the same distance that perhaps Scarpetta is supposed to be feeling, but I don't like it.

All-in-all, to me this book has the feel of a ghost-writer filling in in order to meet a deadline. That doesn't mean I won't buy and read the next one, but if this feel continues in the next it will be my last Scarpetta novel purchase.

this book was really disappointing to me. i've read all of the scarpetta books and was really glad when she came out with another. when i first started reading the book, i was confused becuase the books went from Kay Scarpetta speaking in first person, to the entire book being in 2nd person. i agree that if this book had been the first one of cornwell's that i had ever read, it would also have been the last. i'm hoping that the upcoming Trace will make up for the disappointment of Blow Fly.

Having read the entire Scarpetta series, I was prepared to enjoy the latest installment. In that pursuit, I was greatly disappointed. If this had been the first book I read in the series, it would have been the last. It is as though the book were comprised of out takes from the author's possible scenario file. Things just don't make sense. Readers of a series can be forgiven for expecting a certain consistency in its characters, unless the author gives us plausible reasons why and how the characters have changed. The vast departure in character traits depicted in Blow Fly is bewildering. Dr. Scarpetta has morphed from a can do, no nonsense professional into an emotionally crippled parody of herself, lamenting the good old days, and talking nonsense to her dog, who avoids her. Who wouldn't? We are asked believe that Dr. Scarpetta's changing fortunes have forced her to live in a run down rental house in Florida. I remember--if the author has forgotten--that the (no longer) deceased Benton Wesley left her a $600,000 condo, which she has sold, and invested the money. Her custom built house is history as well. Yet, Cornwell suggests that Dr. Scarpetta is close to standing in the bread line. Admired, even revered, by many, the poor girl can hardly get work or make ends meet. I find this not credible. Even more perplexing is the way all of her closest colleagues-- even those thought to be dead -- have devolved into assassins, no better than the thugs they pursue in the name of civilized society. While Lucy may have always been a loose cannon--more so than ever in this book-- Wesley and Marino have consistently been portrayed as having a basic decency and humanity. Now one blows people away so that he can return to his former life, and the other claims a willingness to murder his own, albeit estranged, son. The law upholders are now the lawless, killing with no seeming remorse, to suit their own agendas. After an array of disjointed 2 page chapters, Benton and Scarpetta meet face to face, in one of the most anti-climatic scenes in letters. It rings hollow. We are told that in a world of lambs and wolves, that Dr. Scarpetta is the latter. Yet, in the face of the deception of all those she loves and trusts, she responds more like prey than predator. Gone is Scarpetta's fire. This is so much out of character that one could conclude that the good doctor must be suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, which is how I felt when I finished this book. Please: Physician, heal thyself.

Blow Fly is a sucker punch. I have enjoyed reading each of the Scarpetta novels, but Blow Fly is terrible. I have never had to work so hard to finish reading a book. There is little or no plot through most of the book, next to nothing seems to happen for the first four hundred pages of the book, and then the book is over. I even wondered if Cornwell didn't have some budding novelist friend of hers write it for her. It is that bad. Bring characters back from the dead is best left to the Bible and daytime soaps. I miss the Scarpetta mysteries Cornwell wrote in first person back at the beginning of the series.

fooled once

i have read and enjoyed every book patricia cornwell has ever written... and completely enjoyed them... this however, is the worst book she has written... what a waste of time... i spend 3 weeks reading this only to have a big giant ????? at the end. it seems like she was in a hurry to finish the book and wrapped it up in the last two chapters... i was sooooo dissappointed!!!!

I wondered if Cornwell watched a certain episode of Dallas before she wrote this. Is she wrapping up a contract with her publisher or what.