Publication Date: December 6, 2011 | Series: A Scarpetta Novel
The new Kay Scarpetta novel from the world's #1 bestselling crime writer.
Determined to find out what happened to her former deputy chief, Jack Fielding, murdered six months earlier, Kay Scarpetta travels to the Georgia Prison for Women, where an inmate has information not only on Fielding, but also on a string of grisly killings. The murder of an Atlanta family years ago, a young woman on death row, and the inexplicable deaths of homeless people as far away as California seem unrelated. But Scarpetta discovers connections that compel her to conclude that what she thought ended with Fielding's death and an attempt on her own life is only the beginning of something far more destructive: a terrifying terrain of conspiracy and potential terrorism on an international scale. And she is the only one who can stop it.
A knife-edged thriller based on the exploits of the toughest female pathologist ever to conduct an autopsy...If you like your fiction fast-paced with a scientific twist, Cornwell delivers once again, and if you are new to Scarpetta, you are sure to be hooked by the end of the first chapter Irish Examiner
About the Author
Patricia Cornwell's most recent bestsellers include Port Mortuary, The Scarpetta Factor, and Portrait of a Killer: Jack the Ripper-Case Closed. Among her earlier works are Postmortem-the only novel to win five major crime awards in a single year-and Cruel and Unusual, which won Britain's prestigious Gold Dagger Award for best crime novel of 1993. Dr. Kay Scarpetta herself won the 1999 Sherlock Award for best detective created by an American author.
Product Details
Reading level: Ages 18 and up
Hardcover: 512 pages
Publisher: Putnam Adult; First Edition first Printing edition (December 6, 2011)
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
This review is from: Red Mist (A Scarpetta Novel) (Hardcover)
I've read all of the Scarpetta novels and after the last 2, vowed never to read another one as I've watched Kay et al slide inexorably down the slippery slope into tedium, repetition, predictability and implausibility. However, last week Cornwell came to our local bookstore and so off I went in the vain hope that if she was actually putting in an appearance in our humble neck of the woods then she MUST have something worth offering. The event was extremely well attended with much overflow milling about in the aisles and generally raising the blood pressure of her "security" (a young man with a Secret Service-looking curly wire hanging out of his ear) and the event organizer who would have been right at home in the Catholic school of which I have shuddering memories. Suitably chastised into order, the tension mounted as we were promised the imminent arrival of Cornwell ("how excited are you??") for 20 minutes. Which is exactly how long we were given. No reading from Red Mist, 20 minutes of questions and answers, and on to the book signing. No dedications please, no conversation or questions (probably just as well as I don't think that my comment of "I hope this is better than the last one" would have gone down very well) - just an illegible scrawled signature and on to the next in line. Move `em along and rack up the dollars. I spent longer trying to find a parking space than I did in the esteemed author's presence. I left clutching my hardback copy for which I paid $$$ and wondering vaguely what had just happened.
Feeling somewhat disgruntled I settled in at home with a pot of tea and The Book. 120 pages later I felt the panic starting to creep in. 50 pages further on I was tempted to fling myself on the floor kicking and screaming. A couple of days later when I had finished it (not all in one sitting - I can only take so much at once) I was leaning towards returning the book and demanding my money back. I mean, it's not as if you can even read the signature! As many other reviewers have stated, Red Mist is an incredibly disappointing novel. Cornwell seems to have reached the sad but often inevitable place that many authors with an initially much loved character reach - she's quite simply run out of steam. It pains me to admit that I no longer like any of her characters; although I must admit to never having liked Lucy. She becomes ever more sociopathic (a word that Cornwell herself used to describe her at the signing) but not in a Dexter-ish way. Benton quite simply should have remained dead. Marino continues to barge about in his boorish/boring manner. Scarpetta has lost the clever edginess for which she was first famous and has simply become an angry, paranoid shrew. Dialogue is weak, plot lines are unlikely, unnecessary repetition is rampant.
Watching Cornwell at the book signing was actually like watching the demise of the Scarpetta novel. One got flashes of humor, breif connection with her audience and semi-interesting tidbits. Then reality hit and you realize that this is about the business of selling novels and content does not really seem to matter anymore. However for me, the proof of the pudding IS in the reading and this is a particular flavor that I wont be indulging in any more. RIP Kay.
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This is the most excruciatingly dull novel I have read in many years, and I read a lot.
I actually am a long time fan of Cornwell and Scarpetta and have read all her books in this series but I could not even finish this one. My rule of thumb is to read at least 100 pages of any book once I start reading it but this was one of a handful of times when I simply could not see wasting any more time after that on a story with such achingly dull characters and a nearly unfathomable plot line when there are plenty of other good books out there waiting to be read. As much as I hate to say it, in my opinion this book is not worth your money or your time. Case closed.
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This review is from: Red Mist (A Scarpetta Novel) (Hardcover)
I always try the new Scarpetta books because I so loved Patricia Cornwell's earlier writings. But, it is torture to finish them and half the time I cannot finish them. They make ME angry and hostile! With each new book, I hope she has taken her negative reviews to heart about all the negativity, anger and hostility her books are fraught with. However, for so many of her last several books, I just hate the tone of her characters....Scarpetta's always so self-righteous and angry, analytical, ad nauseum, about everybody's ulterior motives, personal failings, personal afronts; Morino's pig-like behavior; Benton's distance, coldness and her relationship with him that is so conflicting that I'm not sure what Cornwell wants the relationship to be; etc., etc., etc., same old boring stuff; I could almost lip sync it. Patricia Cornwell needs to seek some serious psychiatric care. Sigh..... What a waste of what used to be such a fabulously interesting writer.
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