Trace (Mass Market Paperback)

~ (Author) "YELLOW BULLDOZERS hack earth and stone in an old city block that has seen more death than most modern wars, and Kay Scarpetta slows her..." (more)
Key Phrases: black cargo pants, man with the clipboard, pool lady, Edgar Allan, Gilly Paulsson, Special Agent Weber (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Cornwell's latest after the disappointing Blow Fly has indomitable medical examiner Kay Scarpetta returning to her office in Richmond five years after being fired. This homecoming will cheer fans: not only does the move put Scarpetta on her own turf, it reinvigorates Cornwell's storytelling, restoring some of the spunk lately lacking in her lead character. Dr. Joel Marcus, Scarpetta's replacement as Virginia's chief medical examiner, has summoned her back to help him puzzle through the mysterious death of a 14-year-old girl. Marcus is generally loathed: he's petty, inept, has a secret garbage-truck phobia and harbors an intense hatred for Scarpetta. Meanwhile, Scarpetta's niece Lucy, owner of a fabulously successful private-eye firm, has her own troubles trying to sort out who attempted to kill her friend Henri (short for Henrietta), who's now under psychiatric treatment by Scarpetta's lover in Aspen, Benton Wesley. Lurking in the background is Edgar Allan Pogue, a nutcase who has a thing for dead bodies and a grudge against Scarpetta. It's her job, as always, to connect all the puzzling forensic dots and identify the killer in time to save herself and her loved ones. She does this, mostly, but leaves the reader to puzzle out a few salient points on his or her own. Cumbersome backstory slows the action, but in general the old Scarpetta comes through, at least in the main, and this will be enough to reassure her many fans and carry them over until her next appearance. BOMC, Literary Guild, Mystery Guild and Doubleday Book Club main selection.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Booklist

Against advice from her niece Lucy, Kay Scarpetta answers a request to return to the Richmond medical examiner's office, the same office from which she was fired, to help with the sensitive case of a dead teen. When she and Pete Marino arrive, they find the new medical examiner to be a vituperative, uncooperative martinet and the office that Kay ran so efficiently in chaos. Two murders, oddly linked, demand their attention. In the meantime, Lucy, still unsettled despite her success with the Last Precinct investigative agency, is having personal problems (there's been an attack on her housemate), which strangely enough find her treading the same path as her aunt Kay. Traces of the smart, dynamic, yet vulnerable Scarpetta of the early novels are in evidence here, and Cornwell has better control of her plot and characters than in her last few efforts, faltering only occasionally when psychobabble weighs things down. The mystery is intriguing, there's plenty of forensic detail, and the ending, though perhaps too abrupt, opens the way for Scarpetta and her associates to proceed in any direction that calls to them. Stephanie Zvirin
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 544 pages
• Publisher: Berkley; 1st THUS edition (June 28, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0425204200
• ISBN-13: 978-0425204207
• Product Dimensions: 6.8 x 4 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (347 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #37,674 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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• This is item 13 in The Kay Scarpetta Series.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

160 of 180 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Of course Kay Scarpetta cannot go "home" again, September 21, 2004

By	Lawrance M. Bernabo (The Zenith City, Duluth, Minnesota) - See all my reviews (TOP 10 REVIEWER)    (COMMUNITY FORUM 04)

This review is from: Trace: A Scarpetta Novel (Hardcover)

My working hypothesis for the past several Kay Scarpetta Mysteries is that Patricia Cornwell does not really like the character she has created. If there are levels beyond adding insult to injury then Scarpetta gets to explore them. When it turned out that Benton Wesley was not dead that was a stunningly cruel low blow. Until Marino drops dead or one of the whackos Lucy keeps letting into her life kills her or gets her killed that represents the lowest moment of Scarpetta's life, which has been exploring the Marianas trench rather relentlessly. So when I picked up "Trace," the 13th (oh-oh) of the Scarpetta mysteries, my first thought is what wringers is our heroine going through this time?

We know that there are certain things we are going to get when Cornwell writes one of these novels and "Trace" provides them. First, there is going to be some political hack who is out to get Scarpetta who is not going to get his comeuppance. I gave up years ago on this every happening, although time and time again somebody goes gunning for Scarpetta unfairly without ever having to pay a price. This time it is Dr. Joel Marcus, the idiot who was eventually hired as the chief medical examiner of Virginia to replace our heroine. Apparently having created the best ME office in the continental United States they decided to find the least qualified person to run it. But by the time Marcus gets to gleefully accuse the great Kay Scarpetta of incompetence he is disappearing quickly in her review mirror. Add to this that going back to her old stomping grounds in Richmond is no where close to being a happy homecoming either.

Second, Lucy is once again involved with somebody with whom she should not be involved. For a smart girl it is amazing how many times Lucy enacts this pattern of self-destruction. Of course it must be rooted in the deep dark psychological turmoil created by her relationships with an inadequate mother, a perfectionist aunt, a volatile Dutch uncle, and all the horrible things that have happened to her in the previous dozen books. But since she has to be doing this on purpose, the big surprise is that this constant attempt to destroy her life is pretty much the only thing at which Lucy has ever failed.

Third, whatever cases Scarpetta, Lucy, Marino and Benton are working on they are related and the true target is not the poor dead person but one of them. They can call each other on the phone and repeatedly tell each other than they cannot say anything about the cases they are working on, but these people are just wasting precious time because somebody is always after one (or more) of them in the small, small world that Cornwell has created.

Of course, if they were not so consumed by their respective cases that are really just one big case then they would have to deal with the own interpersonal problems (Warning: rant coming). After all, if the love of your life pretends he is dead for several years and you were basically the only one of the good guys or bad guys that did not know it then there are a few things to talk over, in Aspen or elsewhere. But every since that big revelation Scarpetta has been studiously ignoring the elephant in the room.

The only refuge for both Scarpetta and the reader is when we get into the detailed forensics work that allowed Cornwell to make her reputation in this genre. Keep in mind that she had taken the "Quincy M.E." idea to the limit before television and popular culture caught up with the C.S.I. franchise. Given how all the characters are spinning their psychological wheels in these recent novels my suspicion is that Cornwell comes up with nice little trick of forensic medicine and then figures out how the aforementioned requisite elements are going to be sandwiches around the examinations of corpses and crime scenes.

For a while Cornwell's fans have come to the consensus that she is going through the motions with these recent Scarpetta novels. At least Scarpetta makes a meal again this time around, albeit in the book's first chapter. Given how good they were in the beginning their growing disappointment and outrage over these recent novels explains why so many of them are abandoning the series. However, I am still interested in the author's desire to heap as much grief on Scarpetta's life as possible. Even if these books are becoming one of literature's longest running sick jokes, there has to be a punch line at the end of all this strum und drang.

22 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Okay, Enough of the Dumb Back Stories!, March 6, 2006

By	Dindy Robinson "Swimming Kangaroo Books" (Arlington, TX United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Each time I pick up a new Scarpetta novel, I am filled with hope that Patricia Cornwell will return to the style of the early novels that made me fall in love with the series. Sadly, this novel, like so many of the recent ones, is another big disappointment.

I'm not even going to bother trying to give a plot summary because it's hardly worth the effort. Yes, there's a disturbing murder of a 14-year-old girl, but it hardly counts for anything in this book. Instead we have the usual Lucy angst because her lover, Henri (Henrietta), was attacked and won't talk to her. We also have Scarpetta angst because Benton Wesley faked his death for years and didn't tell her. Wesley has angst as well because he's still keeping secrets from Scarpetta and Lucy. And why are Wesley and Lucy keeping the fact that Henri was attacked such a big secret from Scarpetta? Why don't these people just TALK to each other? Since they keep getting interrupted on the phone, then maybe they could try emailing each other.

Oh yeah, there's also Marino angst, with his long time crush on Scarpetta and a really bizarre "rough sex" scene involving him and the mother of the victim.

As usual, even though Scarpetta is a respected expert in forensic analysis, the bureaucrats are out to get her. She is summoned to her old ME office in Virginia to work on the case involving the 14-year-old girl and faces overt hostility by Dr. Joel Marcus, her successor. He calls her in to help with the case but doesn't even have the grace to pretend he's happy to have her there. Of course, the office has become a shambles under his direction-- but nobody seems to care that the man hired to replace the brilliant Scarpetta is incompetent.

The book ends abruptly and the reader is left shaking his/her head and asking, "What the heck just happened?" I wish Cornwell would dump Lucy-- she grows more annoying with each book; quit making all her plots revolve around Scarpetta's bizzare little circle of friends/lovers/family members; have Scarpetta and Wesley either work things out or give it up; and give Marino a girlfriend so he can stop salivating over Scarpetta. And while we're at it, let's have the bureaucrats recognize Scarpetta's brilliance and quit fighting her while she does what they hire her to do.

I can't quite give up on this series yet, because the books were just so good in the past. But it's getting harder and harder to keep reading them, and I no longer move them to the top of my reading stack.

21 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars A Disappointed Fan, November 24, 2004

By	CHB (Summerville, SC USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Trace: A Scarpetta Novel (Hardcover)

I was a HUGE Cornwell fan for years and recommended her books to EVERYONE. But I am so sad to see what is becoming of this series, and I'm tired of paying these prices only to be disappointed. First, what happened with Benton was downright cruel. In Cornwell's latest installment, Scarpetta and Marino seemed tired and washed out; the two made ME tired. And Lucy...what is with Lucy? I don't even like her character! The plots starts off on an interesting note, but it just went downhill from there. Marino wasn't so bad, I've always loved him, and the scene where the dead girl's crazy mother bites him and Scarpetta examines him was touching. and then FINALLY she and Benton get together, well, maybe, but not quite sure. Cornwell is far too talented for this, and I long for the days when I could not put the book down. I have not enjoyed her books since "The Last Precinct," and, should I ever buy another book, I will not spend the kind of money I spent on this one.