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Predator (Scarpetta)
 
 
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Predator (Scarpetta) (Mass Market Paperback)

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Key Phrases: pale orange house, citrus inspector, pretty scientist, Johnny Swift, Basil Jenrette, Daggie Simister (more...)
1.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (410 customer reviews)
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  Hardcover, October 24, 2005 $23.04 $0.04 $0.01
  Paperback, Large Print $11.86 $9.27 $0.16
  Mass Market Paperback, September 25, 2006 $9.99 $2.44 $0.01
  Audio, CD, Abridged, Audiobook $9.04 $1.99 $0.99
  Unknown Binding, October 19, 2005 $29.95 $29.95 --

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Predator (Scarpetta) + Book of the Dead (Kay Scarpetta, No. 15) + Trace
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  • This item: Predator (Scarpetta) by Patricia Cornwell

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  • Book of the Dead (Kay Scarpetta, No. 15) by Patricia Cornwell

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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

It's not often a crime novel offers such a smorgasbord of oddball elements, including autopsy advice, methods of combating tree blight, the use of spiders in sadomasochist torture and couples covering the sexual and psychological waterfronts. There's even a little nasty fun at the expense of television psychoanalysts. With geographic locations switching slightly faster than the speed of sound, it's to Reading's credit that she smoothes out the ultra rumpled excesses of Cornwell's mind-boggling plot and takes full advantage of the yarn's narrator-friendly present tense. Having given voice to several earlier books in the series, she's got the main characters down cold. Her Dr. Kay Scarpetta is all snarky professional reserve and personal insecurity. Self-loathing lesbian niece Lucy, sounds properly troublesome and troubled, with an added catch in the throat due to a secret she's keeping. Pete Marino, the bullet-headed, gym rat security chief of the Lucy-originated National Forensic Academy, sounds so gruff and aggressive, he should be kept on a chain leash. And Scarpetta's inamorato, Benton Wesley, whose study of mass murderers' brain patterns gives the novel its title, is, as his name suggests, the very model of a dry, annoyingly passive-aggressive personality. The joke here-intended or not-is that the novel's protagonists are almost as mentally or emotionally disturbed as its homicidal villains. Cornwell seems to have grown weary of the lot of them. But there's still a flicker of life left and Reading has the skill to make the most of it.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Audio CD edition.


Product Description

Investigating the disappearance of two sisters in Florida, Dr. Kay Scarpetta follows clues that twist and turn, leading her into the psychopathic depths of a jailed serial killer's mind.
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Product Details

  • Mass Market Paperback: 464 pages
  • Publisher: Berkley; 1st THUS edition (September 26, 2006)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0425210278
  • ISBN-13: 978-0425210277
  • Product Dimensions: 7.5 x 4.4 x 1.3 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 0.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 1.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (410 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.com Sales Rank: #18,478 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Patricia Cornwell
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Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
pale orange house, citrus inspector, pretty scientist, ordnance gelatin, firearms lab, hell scenes, red handprints, citrus canker, copper sprays, smart board
Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Johnny Swift, Basil Jenrette, Daggie Simister, Detective Wagner, Helen Quincy, Joe Amos, South Florida, Beach Bums, Broward County, Kenny Jumper, Pete Marino, South Beach, Body Farm, Department of Agriculture, Las Olas, South Africa, Walden Pond, Benton Wesley, Christian Christian, Kristin Christian, National Forensic Academy, New Jersey, Palm Beach, Special Ops, Uncle Remus
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Predator (Scarpetta)
69% buy the item featured on this page:
Predator (Scarpetta) 1.8 out of 5 stars (410)
$9.99
Book of the Dead (Kay Scarpetta, No. 15)
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Book of the Dead (Kay Scarpetta, No. 15) 3.2 out of 5 stars (699)
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Scarpetta
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Scarpetta 3.3 out of 5 stars (334)
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The Scarpetta Factor
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410 Reviews
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1.8 out of 5 stars (410 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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448 of 467 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars Very Disappointing, November 2, 2005
This review is from: Predator (Kay Scarpetta Mysteries) (Hardcover)
I've been reading Patricia Cornwell's Scarpetta novels on and off for some time now. There was a time when these stories were innovative, and even groundbreaking in their introduction of the strong female lead into the serial killer, suspense genre. But something happened along the way. I don't know if Cornwell changed her story lines for her own reasons or due to bad advice, but rather than forensic suspense the stories turned into adventures in dysfunctional families. Scarpetta became a flaming codependent trying to mother Lucy, whose goal in life was staying in trouble. And Pete Marino, never the most likeable of characters became increasingly large, loud and obnoxious. To put it bluntly, the killers were often the most attractive characters in the stories.

Cornwell long ago fell off my 'buy in hardback' list. But when I picked up Predator the blurb sounded pretty good, and I decided to give Cornwell another try. The story finds Kay Scarpetta, Pete Marino, and a whole cast of crimestoppers working at the National Forensic Academy, the institute Lucy created so that she could work as a free agent. All isn't well at the Academy, strange events and thefts are interspersed with intense personality conflicts and mistrust until it is obvious that a crisis is brewing.

In the meantime a subtle series of deaths and disappearances come to light that seem to link Basil Jenrette, an imprisoned serial killer who has become the subject of Benton Wesley's research into the deviant mind, with killers down in Florida where the academy is. The connections surface painstakingly slowly after in depth forensic work. This is the formula which made Cornwell a success, and I hoped for a return to the Scarpetta of the early stories.

Unfortunately, that was not to be. Most of the suspense is about which character will have an argument with another, not with the forensic work. Kay Scarpetta literally shotguns the research work, creating a haphazard web of clues and red herrings. If it wasn't for Pat Cornwell's determination to give the whole story away by continually inviting the reader into the mind of the killer (and a very boring killer he is, by the way) the plot would have been almost impossible to follow. It is almost as if Cornwell wrote a bunch of short episodes and then put them in a semblance of order without any effort at continuity. I'll probably never know whether the ending was intended to be a cliff hanger or if the story was abandoned to its loose ends.

It's a shame that this series has been allowed to degenerate the way it has. Cornwell seems to be convinced that if she cannot breath new life into her characters she can succeed by making them so pitiable that the reader will succumb to guilt and read the yet another book. My recommendation is that, under no circumstances buy the hardback. Wait for the paperback if you will, although you may find the time best spent reading something else.
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243 of 268 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars not a good effort, October 30, 2005
By ellen "ellen in atlanta" (Atlanta, Georgia USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Predator (Kay Scarpetta Mysteries) (Hardcover)
Any Cornwell work is better than some other books, but...
I have NEVER liked the way Marino has been handled in the entire series - now he is like a caricature- before he was street wise liasion to Scarpetta, then he blew up to a large smoking drinking person who had health problems, and now he is aloof big muscle bound biker guy who is at odds with Scarpetta and knows something funny is going on with the misinformation -
The series and this novel does not have the BITE it did - if you would reread the first books that made a wave in the thriller genre you will understand what I mean.
We've gone through a lot with the regulars of this series - they have not progressed in the way the folks who pay hardback prices would like. Not so sure I will pay hardback prices again for this series again. and that's sad.
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18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars Scarpetta scrambled, July 2, 2006
This review is from: Predator (Kay Scarpetta Mysteries) (Hardcover)
I used to love Patrica Cornwell's Kay Scarpetta, but as time goes on she has lost a plot in a big way. The relationship between Scarpetta / Lucy / Benton becomes gradually more disfunctional and bizzare. Marino has gone so far off the rails that I seriously expect to see that he is in fact a serial killer himself. These flaws could be excused if the plot was solid, but unfortunately even there we are let down. Once again Scarpetta, Lucy and Benton are all investigating different murders which bizzarrly are all coincidentally related (this has happened too many times before to be interesting), and the killer is once again playing a game that sets the main characters against one another.

My advice to a reader - don't waste your time reading this book, you've read all the component parts of the story in other Cornwell books.

My advice to Cornwell - go back to the original format of simple death investigation and quit slipping off into the realms of psychobabble
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Most Recent Customer Reviews

1.0 out of 5 stars Ugh! What a turn-off.
Let me just say that while Ms. Cornwell was once one of my favorite crime novelists, this one sux. I don't need torture and hideous descriptions of child abuse to make a novel... Read more
Published 11 days ago by REESE ELLA HOWARD

1.0 out of 5 stars Horrible!!!
This is my first Scarpetta book and I must say that it was absolutely awful. Some of the scenes were disgusting/explicit. Read more
Published 1 month ago by beachgirl85

5.0 out of 5 stars Predator
Have not listened to it as yet, since I don't have a tape player. The book "Predator" came in just the way the owner said it would. It looks like new. Read more
Published 3 months ago by Barbara Brenner

1.0 out of 5 stars Once a great writer... Such a sad piece of work
I had been a great fan of Patricia Cornwell's writing for many years, and have read all of her Kay Scapetta series through Book of the Dead (which follows this one), as well as... Read more
Published 4 months ago by Linda Dark Horse

4.0 out of 5 stars Predator - Does She Really Hate Them All?
Cornwell has done such damage to all of her main characters that I think she must really hate them. They aren't evolving, they're corroding! Read more
Published 4 months ago

1.0 out of 5 stars This book made me feel like a scatter brain
I bought this particular book because it's Patricia Cornwell and I assumed it was a winner and trusted a good story. Read more
Published 5 months ago by T. Bollinger

3.0 out of 5 stars First Scarpetta Book (to me)... maybe last?
I'm lukewarm on the subject of this book, Predator. It's got some really interesting plot twists, but they mostly happen in about the last few minutes of the audiotape, which I... Read more
Published 8 months ago by Julie C. Gilbert

5.0 out of 5 stars predator
This was my first PC book and it will always be my favorite. Since Predator I've read quite a few more and they are all fabulous but this one is the best in my opinion. Read more
Published 8 months ago by Christina Cintron

5.0 out of 5 stars You are in for a Surprise (or a Shock!!)
Like all Scarpetta's - i loved this book ... every character had a twist to them - which was extraordinary. Read more
Published 10 months ago by Rishi Dixit

2.0 out of 5 stars Dear oh Dear....
First off I've got to say: I didn't *hate* Blowfly or Trace -- even though the part about Benton's 'death' was pretty riduculous. Read more
Published 13 months ago by Broken_Harlequin

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