The Front (Basic) [Large Print] [Hardcover]

Patricia Cornwell (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 2008 | Series: Basic

The second book featuring Winston Garano.

--This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

At the start of this weak sequel to 2006's At Risk from bestseller Cornwell, Monique Lamont, a politically ambitious D.A., uses a speech at the John F. Kennedy School of Government in Cambridge, Mass., to launch an implausible anticrime initiative she's labeled No Neighbor Left Behind ("The decline of neighborhoods is potentially as destructive as global warming"). Lamont orders her main investigator, Win Garano, to reopen the case of a blind English woman, Janie Brolin, murdered in Watertown in 1962. Lamont suspects Brolin may have been the first victim of the notorious Boston Strangler. For reasons that Lamont fails to coherently articulate, solving this crime will galvanize the public into caring about crime in general. Not incidentally, it will also bolster her chances of ascending to greater power. Lamont's irresponsible approach to her job may strike some readers as bizarre, while Garano's ambivalence about his boss adds little to his appeal. The unsophisticated depiction of power politics (e.g., Lamont suggests to the governor of Massachusetts that solving Brolin's murder will make him Time magazine's man of the year) is not what the legions of Kay Scarpetta fans have come to expect.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

"[A] classically written crime novel...sure to please."
-USA Today

--This text refers to the Mass Market Paperback edition.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 213 pages
• Publisher: Thorndike Press (May 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1410404757
• ISBN-13: 978-1410404756
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 5.7 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 2.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (276 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,140,133 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Patricia Cornwell was born on June 9, 1956, in Miami, Florida, and grew up in Montreat, North Carolina.

Following graduation from Davidson College in 1979, she began working at the Charlotte Observer, rapidly advancing from listing television programs to writing feature articles to covering the police beat. She won an investigative reporting award from the North Carolina Press Association for a series of articles on prostitution and crime in downtown Charlotte.

Her award-winning biography of Ruth Bell Graham, A Time for Remembering, was published in 1983. From 1984 to 1990, she worked as a technical writer and a computer analyst at the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner in Richmond, Virginia.

Cornwell's first crime novel, Postmortem, was published by Scribner's in 1990. Initially rejected by seven major publishing houses, it became the first novel to win the Edgar, Creasey, Anthony, and Macavity Awards as well as the French Prix du Roman d'Aventure in a single year. In Postmortem, Cornwell introduced Dr. Kay Scarpetta as the intrepid Chief Medical Examiner of the Commonwealth of Virginia. In 1999, Dr. Scarpetta herself won the Sherlock Award for best detective created by an American author.

Following the success of her first novel, Cornwell has written a series of bestsellers featuring Kay Scarpetta, her detective sidekick Pete Marino and her brilliant and unpredictable niece, Lucy Farinelli, including: Body of Evidence (1991); All That Remains (1992); Cruel and Unusual (1993), which won Britain's prestigious Gold Dagger Award for the year's best crime novel; The Body Farm (1994); From Potter's Field (1995); Cause of Death (1996); Unnatural Exposure (1997); Point of Origin (1998); Black Notice (1999); The Last Precinct (2000); Blow Fly (2003); Trace (2004); Predator (2005); Book of the Dead (2007), which won the 2008 Galaxy British Book Awards' Books Direct Crime Thriller of the Year, making Cornwell the first American ever to win this award; Scarpetta (2008); The Scarpetta Factor (2009); and Port Mortuary (2010). In 2011 Cornwell was awarded the Medal of Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters, one of France's most prestigious awards to honor those who have distinguished themselves in the domains of art or literature, or by their contribution to the development of culture in France and throughout the world.

In addition to the Scarpetta novels, she has written three best-selling books featuring Andy Brazil: Hornet's Nest (1996), Southern Cross (1998) and Isle of Dogs (2001); two cook books: Scarpetta's Winter Table (1998) and Food to Die For (2001); and a children's book: Life's Little Fable (1999). In 1997, Cornwell updated A Time for Remembering, which was reissued as Ruth, A Portrait: The Story of Ruth Bell Graham. Intrigued by Scotland Yard's John Grieve's observation that no one had ever tried to use modern forensic evidence to solve the murders committed by Jack the Ripper, Cornwell began her own investigation of the serial killer's crimes. In Portrait of a Killer: Jack the Ripper--Case Closed (2002), she narrates her discovery of compelling evidence to indict the famous artist Walter Sickert as the Ripper.

In January 2006, the New York Times Magazine began a 15-week serialization of At Risk, featuring Massachusetts State Police investigator Win Garano and his boss, district attorney Monique Lamont. Its sequel, The Front, was serialized in the London Times in the spring of 2008. Both novellas were subsequently published as books and promptly optioned for adaptation by Lifetime Television Network, starring Daniel Sunjata and Andie MacDowell. The films made their debut in April 2010.

In April 2009, Fox acquired the film rights to the Scarpetta novels, featuring Angelina Jolie as Dr. Kay Scarpetta. Cornwell herself wrote and co-produced the movie ATF for ABC.

Often interviewed on national television as a forensic consultant, Cornwell is a founder of the Virginia Institute of Forensic Science and Medicine, a founding member of the National Forensic Academy, a member of the Advisory Board for the Forensic Sciences Training Program at the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, NYC, and a member of the Harvard-affiliated McLean Hospital's National Council, where she is an advocate for psychiatric research. She is also well known for her philanthropic contributions to animal rescue and criminal justice, as well as endowing college scholarships and promoting the cause of literacy on the national scene. Some of her projects include the establishment of an ICU at Cornell's Animal Hospital, the archaeological excavation of Jamestown and the scientific study of the Confederacy's submarine H.L. Hunley. Most recently, she donated a million dollars to Harvard's Fogg Museum to establish a chair in inorganic science.

Cornwell's books have been translated into 36 languages across more than 50 countries, and she is regarded as one of the major international best-selling authors. Her novels are praised for their meticulous research and an insistence on accuracy in every detail, especially in forensic medicine and police procedures. She is so committed to verisimilitude that, among other accomplishments, she became a helicopter pilot and a certified scuba diver, and qualified for a motorcycle license because she was writing about characters who were doing these things. "It is important to me to live in the world I write about," she often says. "If I want a character to do or know something, I want to do or know the same thing."

Visit the author's website at: www.patriciacornwell.com

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

112 of 130 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Cornwell Turns Garbage To Gold Once Again, May 30, 2008

By 

Renee Wader - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Front (Hardcover)

I thought Cornwell could do no worse than Isle of Dogs - The Front was as bad (if not as vulger). The author sells her books because of her name. It seems you can turn out any ridiculous piece of trash and make money, if at one point in your career you were a legitimate author. I believed that James Patterson was the master in this regard, but even he has not produced anything so ridiculous and nonsensical as this book. The positive reviewers who are quoted here must have entirely different standards than I, or have read a different book. I give it 0 stars and resent the time wasted reading it - fortunately however, it was so "cut to the bone" that even with thick paper and big print, there was nothing much to read. Last Cornwell book for me - Renee Wadler

29 of 31 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Cornwell Phoned This One In, January 8, 2009

By 

Bonnie Garfield (York, PA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Front (Hardcover)

This book is just awful. Did Cornwell write this on her Blackberry? It just seems like something written for the text-messaging crowd. Her prose is anemic, her characters rehashed from the Scarpetta series, the story line is flat, and the sharp, detailed writing she has given us in the past is as stale as yesterday's Starbucks. And how many cops ride Ducati motorcycles? Honestly... Cornwell phoned this one in. She's just writing for retirement money now.

35 of 42 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Less than 1 Star if Possible, June 2, 2008

By 

HotMomMom "Trish" (Eastern Shore USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Front (Hardcover)

This is by far one of the worst books I've ever read. Lackluster boring characters, no strong plot/plots. Belive me when I say "this is not a spoiler"...this book does not address the title of the book "The Front". What exactly was this book about, anybody, anybody.....