Hornet's Nest [Hardcover]

Patricia Cornwell (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 13, 1997

The gritty, heroic life of big-city police is seen through the eyes of three leading crimefighters from Charlotte, North Carolina--Police Chief Judy Hammer, Deputy Chief Virginia West, and ambitious young reporter Andy Brazil. By the author of Cruel and Unusual. Lit Guild, Doubleday, & Mystery Guild Main.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Patricia Cornwell turns from forensics to police procedures in her latest novel, Hornet's Nest. This book is less a thriller than a character study of the main characters: Judy Hammer, chief of police in Charlotte, North Carolina; Hammer's deputy, Virginia West; and Andy Brazil, a young reporter assigned to ride with the police as they go about their jobs.

From Publishers Weekly

The decision to abandon her forensic pathologist Kay Scarpetta (Body of Evidence; Cause of Death; etc.) leaves Cornwell lacking more than a fail-safe series heroine. The only credible element in this novel is the urban New South setting. The story-about two women top cops and a young male newspaper reporter in Charlotte, N.C.-is routine fare at best. The three characters-42-year-old Deputy Chief Virginia West; her boss, unhappily married Chief Judy Hammer; and handsome wunderkind journalist and volunteer cop, Andy Brazil-are preternaturally competent automatons, obsessive and utterly devoid of self-awareness. A sequence of serial killings of out-of-towners, men who are pulled from their rental cars, sexually mutilated, marked with orange spray paint and shot, creates tension in Charlotte. While Hammer struggles with city politics and a depressed, obese husband, West contends with Brazil (a "handsome and fierce" 22-year-old with "total photographic recall"), who is on assignment to write about police activity, having impressed his editor by turning in "a hundred of hours' overtime five months in a row." Rather than reveal her characters through their words and actions, Cornwell forces them on us predigested ("West believed women were great"; "Brazil did not believe prostitution was right."). In that same descriptive mode, she takes them on roller coaster rides of extravagant emotion-rage, grief, resolve, despair-and offers set pieces in place of plot: mid-book, more than 150 pages pass without mention of the murders. We are made privy to the fantasies of West's cat, but not to the motivations behind the killings. There is nothing to believe in on these pages beyond Charlotte itself. 750,000 first printing; $500,000 ad/promo; Literary Guild, Mystery Guild and Doubleday Book Club selections.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 377 pages
• Publisher: G. P. Putnam's Sons; 1st edition (January 13, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0399142282
• ISBN-13: 978-0399142284
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 2.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (390 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #681,957 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

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Still pondering., June 16, 2003

By 

D. Martinez "shockerdm" (Denton, TX USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Hornet's Nest (Andy Brazil) (Mass Market Paperback)

I was warned about this but I couldn't remember which title until I was about four pages into the book. It was a great (big)departure from the Scarpetta series that I had gotten used to. The characters were great in and of themselves. They interacted well. The story was alright but not terrific. I found it lacking coming from Cornwell but I have to remember that it was NOT a Scarpetta story. As much as it pains me as a woman to say this, it kept creeping into my mind that Cornwell was having the same hot flashes that West had throughout the book.

The beginning to about 3/5 in was overtly sexual in tone, all the descriptions of persons for one and most characters being either wildly homosexual or homophobic, then it leapt to kooky when she began telling parts of the story from the point of view of characters who mattered little and do I have to mention the cat? Then it was back to the heavy sexual tones and interlaced with kooky feline perspective that was rather distracting and detracted from the main story.

The book is not great. Like I said, I can imagine this being written under the Change or a menacing deadline, maybe even as an exercise to vent gone weirdly awry. While not told in a very Scarpetta way, it was okay. If anyone paid attention to the beginning of the novel and the explanation about the Hornet's nest and takes that into the account through the rest of the book, it makes an insane sort of sense.

I was not thrilled with the ending and would have thrown the book had I not feared harming someone else in the room. I don't recommend buying the book. Check it out from a library if you're curious. Or, if you have to buy it, make sure you have the address where you can sell it back. It will help pass the time of two days, I guess I read it rather quickly, and lend to some interesting psychological profiles but other than that... I can't say the book would do much for diehard Scarpetta fans.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars A Waste of 8 Hours, August 12, 2005

By 

Daniel E. Grambihler - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Hornet's Nest (Andy Brazil) (Mass Market Paperback)

I rarely write book reviews, but I felt compelled to warn people to steer clear of this book. As many reviewers of this book have stated, this is not a Dr. Kay Scarpetta book. Don't let that scare you away. It's certainly not the reason why I hated this book.

Written differently, this could have been a compelling book. It had an interesting mix of characters, and a mystery to be solved. And it spent a fair amount of time getting into the heads of characters. I happen to enjoy that. However, this book was absolutely the most egregious example (and I mean egregious in the current usage - as in: exceedingly bad) of politically correct stereotypes I could possibly imagine. And the Southern stereotypes were no better. If this were an episode of "Family Guy" I would have been laughing through the bulk of it. About the only thing it lacked in that respect were the Duke boys and the General Lee.

We learn that women as power figures are something to be feared and the evil, white-male power brokers of the city of Charlotte (who are even in control of all elections, it would seem) regularly plot to squash them where they stand. As any self-respecting white male knows, there ain't nothin' worse than a woman whats don't knows hows to keeps her place; 'cept maybe fer homos. This is not an exaggeration. There's a redneck character named Bubba, for God's sake. And the scene at the seafood restaurant was absolutely choice: our white male hero (who's okay because he's a sensitive journalist) and a gay companion nearly get their bottoms kicked by the redneck, homophobic patrons of a - get this - oyster bar. Right. I personally hate going to oyster bars and crab shacks because of all of the homophobic, racist rednecks there. Of course, we also learn toward the end of this waste of paper that evil, white, rich men can be rehabilitated under the right circumstances. And when I write "rehabilitated" I mean they can be made to understand that everything can be forgiven if only they give large chunks of their ill-gotten gains to the downtrodden, unfortunate masses. The portions of the book devoted to the inner thoughts of the reincarnated Abyssinian cat, while entertaining from a cat owner's perspective, are undiluted (and unbelievable) fantasy. And, of course, we also learn that there really is no right or wrong if we just spend the time to understand what unfortunate circumstances victimized the characters into acting the way that they do.

To end this on a mildly positive note, the interactions involving the misreading of one character by another based upon body language and situational framing were good. It was reminiscent of the novel "Thinks..." by David Lodge. And it's not the evolution of the character's philosophical underpinnings based upon their deeper understanding of others that bothers me; Cornwell uses this to great effect in her other novels. It's the clumsy, preachy way in which she approaches this that I found so annoying.

If this were the first Patricia Cornwell book that I had ever read, it would also be my last. Fortunately, her other books are not plagued by these faults. I highly recommend her other books; this one, however, is a stinker.

13 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars THIS BOOK WAS DOA..., October 20, 2002

By 

Lawyeraau (Balmoral Castle) - See all my reviews
(TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)    (COMMUNITY FORUM 04)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Hornet's Nest (Andy Brazil) (Mass Market Paperback)

I have read a number of other Patricia Cornwell books from her Dr. Kay Scarpetta series. While they have all varied in quality, they usually range from good to excellent. That is why this book was a complete shock, as it is one of the worst books that I have read in a long time.

This book is not a Dr. Kay Scarpetta series book. Instead, it is a police procedural that focuses on three individuals: Charlotte's stalwart Police Chief Judy Hammer, her drop dead gorgeous Deputy Chief Virginia West, and Andy Brazil, an intrepid, young news reporter. Unfortunately, while the premise may have been inspired, the book fails in its execution, with characters that never quite work, relationships that are far fetched or never quite gel, a plot that lacks focus and fails to capture the reader's imagination, as well as an excess of mediocre writing in need of serious editing.

This audio book also suffers from a painful reading by noted actor Chris Sarandon, whose performance on this audio book is almost embarrassing. Narrated in a precise, almost prissy manner, his performance lacks a certain grit that is almost demanded by a police procedural. Moreover, his segues into the different characters are done in a way that grate upon the ear. Chris, a word to the wise...don't quit your day job.

Readers beware. This book was DOA. Do not spend one cent on this turkey. If you feel the urge for turkey, Thanksgiving is just around the corner. Be thankful that you have not wasted your money on this book.