At Risk (Hardcover)

by Patricia Cornwell (Author) "AN AUTUMN STORM has pounded Cambridge all day and is set to play a violent encore into the night..." (more)
Key Phrases: Miss Dog, Vivian Finlay, Monique Lamont (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
Cornwell's latest-a stand-alone thriller that was originally serialized in the New York Times Magazine-is likely to disappoint even diehard fans of her bestselling Kay Scarpetta novels (The Body Farm, etc.). This time, the action is set in Boston, where an attractive and ambitious DA, Monique Lamont, seeks to use a new anticrime initiative to propel herself into the governor's mansion. Lamont plucks her top investigator, Winston Garano, from a special forensics course to probe an obscure cold case, but the detective's inquiries suggest that his boss may be playing a duplicitous game. The writing, pacing, characterizations and plot are far from Cornwell's best work, and the solution to the old murder mystery is anticlimactic.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Product Description
For decades, Patricia Cornwell has demonstrated her extraordinary ability not only to entertain and enthrall but to surprise as well. Beginning in January 2006, The New York Times Magazine will serialize a brand-new Cornwell thriller, a book filled with all the chilling suspense, rich characters, and trademark forensics that have made her an international phenomenon. But what she does with those ingredients is a revelation.

A Massachusetts state investigator is called home from Knoxville, Tennessee, where he is completing a course at the National Forensic Academy. His boss, the district attorney, attractive but hard-charging, is planning to run for governor, and as a showcase she's planning to use a new crime initiative called At Risk-its motto: "Any crime, any time." In particular, she's been looking for a way to employ cutting-edge DNA technology, and she thinks she's found the perfect subject in an unsolved twenty-year-old murder-in Tennessee. If her office solves the case, it ought to make them all look pretty good, right?

Her investigator is not so sure-not sure about anything to do with this woman, really-but before he can open his mouth, a shocking piece of violence intervenes, an act that shakes up not only both their lives but the lives of everyone around them. It's not a random event. Is it personal? Is it professional? Whatever it is, the implications are very, very bad indeed . . . and they're about to get much worse.

Sparks fly, traps spring, twists abound-this is the master working at the top of her game.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 212 pages
• Publisher: Putnam Adult (May 23, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0399153624
• ISBN-13: 978-0399153624
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.8 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 1.8 out of 5 stars See all reviews (228 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #140,650 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

346 of 357 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars At Risk is Right!, May 23, 2006

By	BeachBum (Clearwater, FL United States) - See all my reviews

I don't usually write negative reviews even when I don't like a particular book. But in this case, I have to make an exception. As usual, I rushed out to get At Risk just as soon as the local bookstore opened with it (sorry about that Amazon....in the case of Cornwell books, I usually just can't wait!). Finished it in a couple of hours and felt like throwing it against the wall.

It's a real stretch to believe that the same person who wrote Cruel and Unusual, The Body Farm, From Potter's Field and Unnatural Exposure could have written this book. The dust jacket says it was originally written as a fifteen-part serial for a magazine, and it shows. Very little plot continuity with disjointed leaps all over the place; little, if any, meaningful character development; even the usual sterling scientific minutiae we've come to expect from a Cornwell book is superficial and mostly unexplained.

I have been a loyal fan of Cornwell's since I first stumbled across Postmortem. I even enjoyed her efforts in the Andy Brazil series that most everyone else hated. But in all honesty, At Risk seems like she felt obligated to get another book out in a hurry and just threw this one together. The dust jacket says "...this is the master working at the top of her game." If this is the top of Cornwell's game she's at risk of losing her legions of fans.

Not worth the time or money, folks.

145 of 148 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars At Risk... of losing her fans?, May 28, 2006

By	Robert Schmidt (Honolulu, HI & Logan, UT USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

At Risk is an interesting novel. It is much shorter than Patricia Cornwell's previous books, with new characters within the medical examiner/police framework. However, in this case, the mystery story is weak, the characters forgettable, and the motivations and plot are, frankly, unclear. It seems as if this is the prelude for a deeper, richer story, not a complete story in itself. The wordsmithing isn't quite up to my expectations of her standard work. All in all, this book reads like a rush job, an editorial demand that a book, whether ready or not, had to come out prior to the start of the summer reading season.

I'm not the biggest fan of Patricia Cornwell's more recent work. Body Farm, to me, was her best book. Since Body Farm, the characters in her books (and their behaviors) are getting more bizarre, as are the crimes.

Let's hope Cornwell's stories improve at the same rate our crime-fighting technologies advance.... quickly. This book needs to go back into the incubator... it's not ready to hatch.

18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Cornwell, did you just get dumped???????, June 4, 2006

By	Jason "Jason" (Knoxville Tn) - See all my reviews

First of all let me say that I loved Patricia Cornwell and the Scarpetta series was very addicting. I was very excited about this new book At Risk, well not anymore. I think she must have just been dumped or went through a tramatic time in her life for her to just dump her fans like this. From the moment I opened the "official" hardback which by the way is book club size, I was disgusted. The margins are so wide and the text is double spaced, I felt like I was about to read a third grader's Goosebumps book. That would have been okay had the book been about 750 pages. However, you just know if the publisher has to space it out just to make it 212 pages, this is not going to be good or have any suitable detail. Lukily I opened the book before wasting my money. I sat down at the book store and read the whole book in an hour and half. The conclusion: Cornwell- maybe someone needs to study your brain and figure out what went wrong with it like they did with the criminals in PREDATOR because something isn't working anymore up there!