Point of Origin (Kay Scarpetta) (Hardcover)

~ Patricia Daniels Cornwell (Author), Patricia Cornwell (Author), Penguin Putnam (Editor), Marysarah Quinn (Illustrator) "BENTON WESLEY WAS taking off his running shoes in my kitchen when I ran to him, my heart tripping over fear and hate and remembered..." (more)
Key Phrases: decomposition room, swimming cap, New York, Carrie Grethen, Kenneth Sparkes (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Virginia's chief medical examiner Dr. Kay Scarpetta is getting ready for a romantic holiday with her retired-FBI-profiler boyfriend, Benton Wesley, when she receives a cryptic and foreboding letter: "Hey DOC, Tick Tock, Sawed bone and fire," it begins. Even more creepy, the taunting note has been signed by Carrie Grethen, the psychotic killer Kay helped send to a psychiatric facility for going on a murder spree with Temple Gault in Cornwell's earlier book Body Farm. Benton believes that Grethen--who also happens to be the former lover of Scarpetta's niece Lucy--has big plans for a comeback. And before Kay and Benton can leave for their trip and discuss it further, Scarpetta is called upon to don yet another professional hat, that of a "consulting forensic pathologist" for the federal government. Someone has burned a highfalutin horse ranch and all of its contents, including a human being, to the ground. Worse, Grethen has escaped and is on the loose and closer to Kay and her beloved than she knows. Point of Origin, the ninth Scarpetta thriller, is classic Cornwell: rich with detail and strong dialogue, and doused with harrowing twists.

From Publishers Weekly

Cornwell fans who relish her Kay Scarpetta stories for the postmortem findings will welcome this tale of twisted minds and the gory havoc they cause. Acronym fans will also be pleased. This tale opens with the complete destruction by fire of a Virginia horse farm, the owner of which was said to be in London. As consultant to the FBI and the ATF's NRT (that's the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms' National Response Team), Scarpetta joins the investigation on site and discovers some remains of a young woman in the master bath. Although the origin of the fire remains a mystery, research turns up two similar unsolved incidents from years earlier, female victims who were dead before the accompanying conflagration. Another fire disguising another murder, and the escape of Carrie Grethen, evil woman partner of Scarpetta's now dead archenemy Temple Gault, from a New York City hospital for the criminally insane, ups Scarpetta's anxiety level about both her beloved, brilliant niece, Lucy, who was seduced by Grethen in The Body Farm, and her lover, psychological profiler Benton Wesley. A third fire covers a third personally devastating death before Scarpetta is able to finger Grethen's new diabolical partner and survive a harrowing finale in a helicopter. Although Cornwell repeatedly tells us how anxious, strung out or devastated Scarpetta feels in the face of Grethen's evil threats, there's very little dramatization of these powerfully emotional conditions. The author is convincing mainly in the delivery of chilling forensic details. One million first printing; $750,000 ad/promo; Literary Guild, Doubleday Book Club and Mystery Guild main selections; simultaneous Putnam Berkley audio.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 272 pages
• Publisher: Putnam Adult; First edition (July 6, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0399143947
• ISBN-13: 978-0399143946
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.2 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (514 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #451,139 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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• This is item 9 in The Kay Scarpetta Series.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

27 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Savored Moments, February 3, 2000

By	Andrea Egger, author of Grave Accusations (Gallup, NM USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Point of Origin (Kay Scarpetta) (Paperback)

I've read all of Cornwell's books up to this one, and I found this sad, sad, sad -- as well as wonderfully done. As usual, Cornwell's characters are so real the reader feels like we know them personally. In Point of Origin, Cornwell gives the morbidly curious her usual dose of the gross but very real aspect of death. Most people don't think of the cutting open of bodies as part of murder investigations, but as a writer and reporter, I have come across medical investigators and crime myself. I have grown so fond of her character, Dr. Kay Scarpetta, that I can see her with my own eyes. (In fact, I picture her as looking exactly like Cornwell, from her descriptions of Scarpetta and Cornwell's own photographs and Cornwell's experience). Scarpetta and myself savored the last moments of a dying relationship through this book. Cornwell never gives you an ending you'd expect. In fact, this one shocked me, and I'm pretty unshockable. Putting emotion aside, it was the best possible ending she could have done. I think Scarpetta would agree, although in an ironic, unhappy sense. The book serves up horrendous death and a lesson readers can take with them in their own lives -- not to take anything for granted. Bravo, Cornwell!

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Lukewarm, not hot., May 1, 2001

By	QuinnCreative "-Q" (Glendale, AZ, USA) - See all my reviews (VINE VOICE)

This review is from: Point of Origin (Kay Scarpetta) (Paperback)

There is a guideline among play/screenwriters that says if a gun is on the table in the first act, it must be fired by act three. So when the villain's threatening letter appears on the first page of the book, a reader can reasonably expect a person-to-person confrontation by the end of the book. Don't hold your breath, it never happens. The ending clearly points to a continuation of Carrie the Villain in another Kay Scarpetta book, but disappointed fans may not pick up the next installment.

Kay Scarpetta fans will have to be devoted and loyal to love this book. The quality if a far cry from the tensely plotted, intriguingly detailed books that Cornwell wrote at the beginning of the series. The result is a main character who has shed all her flaws, leaving an unsympathetic, driven, workaholic superhero in her place.

Kay's niece, in this plot installment, is fast following the character of her aunt. In other books this young woman was brittle, smart, sympathetic, and on the brink of self-understanding. Now she is just another lesbian computer genius, athlete, and expert helicopter pilot who comes complete with incredible intuition and brilliant firefighting skills and who regularly falls in love with her supervisors. Oh, and she was the villain's former lover, too. But it wasn't her fault. She was young. And dumb. Her character just doesn't add up.

Readers can't sympathize with someone they don't understand, let alone identify with. A good book editor would have made sure to create a character transition for those who have not read every Kay Scarpetta book in order.

And that's the major problem with the book--it's not badly written, it has a lot of potential to be another stay-up-all-night-and-read-Cornwell book, but it is badly damaged by sloppy work that could have been easily fixed by a shrewd book editor. An editor would have also made sure the escaped colt that received a big buildup was explained instead of forgotten; that Mr. Sparks either had a name change or at least a more finished role in the second half of the book; that people vital to the plot line would have been introduced before the plot line is exhausted; that the dialogue flows less awkwardly; that the non-word "ironical" never appeared at all; and that the ending explained better why no chemical ingniter was found in the tests when it suddenly becomes an important factor in the book.

Let's hope plot details get fixed by the next installment, or it won't be a mystery that Kay Scarpetta fans begin to vanish.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Can't Cornwell write a book ending anymore, December 6, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Point of Origin (Kay Scarpetta) (Paperback)

Cornwell's early novels were very entertaining. They also showed a great deal of insight in how an ME operates (no pun intended). However, she seems to be in a rut. First of all, someone has to follow Kay Scarpatta around and keep her from dating. Her boyfriends all seem to die violently. Can't Cornwell write a break up scene or a decent Dear John letter? And what is her fascination with niece Lucy's past, present, and future lovelife? It isn't titalating or even interesting. (Of course neither were Cornwell's own alleged misadventures walking down that particular street.) Most of all, the ending is downright stupid. To invest five to six hours reading a book only to have everything resolved by a plot connivance (and not for the first time I might add) because an author can't come up with anything better, cheats the reader. Maybe we should all demand our money back. Maybe Cornwell should do us all a favor in her next book by letting the boyfriend live and having Scarpatta get killed off.