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Point of Origin (Kay Scarpetta)
 
 
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Point of Origin (Kay Scarpetta) (Paperback)

~ (Author), Patricia Daniels Cornwell (Author) "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...)
3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (513 customer reviews)

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Amazon Price New from Used from
  Kindle Edition, June 1, 2001 $7.99 -- --
  Library Binding, July 31, 1999 $16.95 $16.95 --
  Paperback, June 23, 2008 $9.99 $3.28 $0.01
  Paperback, August 1, 1999 -- $0.40 $0.01
  Mass Market Paperback, December 31, 2004 -- $16.70 $0.01
  Audio, CD, Unabridged -- $147.89 $19.94
  Unknown Binding, December 31, 1997 -- -- $3.73
  Audio, Download Offsite Link $15.26 or less with new Audible membership

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Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

When your everyday life is filled with death it's easy to find yourself a little edgy. The audio version of Patricia Cornwell's Point of Origin gives fans of her familiar heroine, Dr. Kay Scarpetta, a little something extra, a chance to hear the deep hurt and burning cynicism of the chief medical examiner's biting words. "You don't put your hands inside their ruined bodies and touch and measure their wounds.... You see clean case files and glossy photos and cold crime scenes. You spend more time with the killers than with those they ripped from life. And maybe you sleep better than I do, too. Maybe you still dream because you aren't afraid to."

Perhaps because Kate Reading has also narrated Cornwell's Unnatural Exposure and Cause of Death, her voice conveys experience and the history of what has come before, allowing listeners to hear between the lines. Using a subtle but effective range of vocal inflections, Reading lifts the characters off the page and carries them along as the plot spins ever faster, tangling Scarpetta in a snarl of arson, deceit, and psychopathic murder. With her arch nemesis making threats and suspicious fires leaving calcified corpses, Dr. Scarpetta's long-overdue romantic getaway has gone up in smoke. It's just one more day at the morgue, and Point of Origin, another hit in the popular series of Scarpetta mysteries, finds the good doctor's attitude honed razor sharp. (Running time: 11 hours, eight cassettes) --George Laney --This text refers to the Audio Cassette edition.



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. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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Product Details

  • Paperback: 416 pages
  • Publisher: Berkley; 1st THUS edition (August 1, 1999)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0425169863
  • ISBN-13: 978-0425169865
  • Product Dimensions: 6.6 x 4.3 x 1.3 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 7 ounces
  • Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (513 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.com Sales Rank: #193,959 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Patricia Cornwell
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First Sentence:
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 horror. Read the first page
Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
decomposition room, swimming cap
Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
New York, Carrie Grethen, Kenneth Sparkes, Aunt Kay, Claire Rawley, Hilton Head, Kellie Shephard, Lehigh County, Molly Brown, Newton Joyce, North Carolina, Sierra Bravo, Temple Gault, Venice Beach, Ward's Island, Wrightsville Beach, Austin Hart, Benton Wesley, Captain Marino, Delta Alpha, Hootowl Farm, Kay Scarpetta, Marlene Farber, Pete Marino, Susan Blaustein
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Customer Reviews

513 Reviews
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Average Customer Review
3.3 out of 5 stars (513 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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27 of 29 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Savored Moments, February 3, 2000
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!
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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
  
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.

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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
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.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews

4.0 out of 5 stars patricia cornwell point of origin
I am collecting the series of patricia cornwell's kay scarpetta character. So far I have about half of the series. Read more
Published 6 days ago by Scarpetta Fan

5.0 out of 5 stars Thanks for the book...love the fiction by Patricia Cornwell!
Thanks for sending the book I ordered in a timely manner!

You rock!
Published 1 month ago by Jared Jensen

5.0 out of 5 stars Point of Origin to Last Precinct
From "Point of Origin" to "Last Precinct" is a wonderful ride. However, I view "Last Precinct" as the last Sharpetta novel worth reading. Read more
Published 6 months ago by M. Martin

5.0 out of 5 stars This one tugged at ther heart!
This was a heart touching book. See you have the Hornets Nest that made you laugh and this one that brought tear's. What a great author you are Ms. Cornwell! Read more
Published 9 months ago by Book Worm

1.0 out of 5 stars Unreadable (and annoying)
Boring. Predictable. Unfinished. In the end, too many unresolved issues that at one time in the book were critical and all-consuming. Read more
Published 10 months ago by ST1

5.0 out of 5 stars Patricia Cornwell review
I am an avid fan of Patricia Cornwell and have never read a Kay Scarpetta mystery I didn't like and this includes my most recent purchase Point of Origin. Read more
Published 12 months ago by Karen Walker

4.0 out of 5 stars One of Scarpetta's better books
This book is what I consider the last good Scarpetta novel; all the books that follow it (The Last Precinct, Blowfly, Predator, et al) are hardly worth the paper they're printed... Read more
Published 13 months ago by Barbara L. Lemaster

4.0 out of 5 stars Fire and Forensics
I liked this installment in the Kay Scarpetta series. The forensics are detailed and graphic, and by now I feel I know her characters well, both their good aspects and their... Read more
Published 22 months ago by Susan Calvin

3.0 out of 5 stars Has Cornwell ever been on a horse farm?
The large number of reviews previously posted for Point of Origin sum up the majority of my disappointments with the book. Read more
Published 22 months ago by looking for a good book

2.0 out of 5 stars Cornwell goes downhill after this Book
I'm not sure what really made me not like the most. Either the ending or Lucy.

The ending reminded me of a soap opera. Read more
Published on October 12, 2007 by Dcl70

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