POINT OF ORIGIN [Mass Market Paperback]

Patricia Cornwell (Author)

Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback
• Publisher: Berkley Books; Mass Paperback Edition edition (2008)
• ASIN: B002DBS41G
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (516 customer reviews)

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

31 of 33 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!

16 of 20 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.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Must Read Mystery Thriller ..., December 30, 2001

By 

Monica Clifton (Texas, I train horses and I love to read...) - See all my reviews

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

Once again, I disagree with a lot of the 'armchair' reviewers on their 'too harsh' of a review of a writer's book. I think it is in poor taste and tiring. Tonight, every book I click on has had more negetive reviews than good ones. What's up with that?

Again, I read a book for the fun and entertainment and of course the engaging plot (like in this wonderfully entertaining story) by Patricia Cornwell 'Point of Orgin.'

Point Of Orgin is a story that will have the reader swiftly turning the pages as quickly as possible with the story's many surprising twists ans turns.

The characters are engaging, and entertaining, and the plot suspensful, and surprising. I could also tell in the creating of Ms. Cornwells' story she had apparently spent many man hours in research to provide her loyal fans with both a knowledgable and professional account of forensic science.

One woman's opinion, buy the book and see for yourself, 'Point of Orgin' is a must read, you will not be disappointed!