Copyright 1999 by Cornwell Enterprises, Inc. Published by G.P Putnam & Sons.
There was a time, years ago, when I read a lot of Patricia Cornwell’s Kay Scarpetta books because Jett was a big fan. Then I ran into one – can’t remember the name now – that was a real stinker. One of the worst books I have ever read. So I haven’t touched Cornwell in years. But then I found one that looked interesting…
Well, this one is not as bad as the one that swore me off her, but it isn’t great either.
Scarpetta is, in this book, the Chief Medical Examiner for the Commonwealth of Virginia. She autopsies corpses and helps solve murder mysteries. She has an emotionally distant mother, a narcissistic sister, a loving but angry lesbian niece, an angry detective friend and a young colleague (in this book) who is both committing crimes and undermining her career. She is dealing with the recent death of her lover and a new Deputy Chief of Police in Richmond who is determined to get her fired.
There is a lot of unpleasantness in Scarpetta’s life and it make for an unpleasant book.
Besides having a very lesbian niece, there are rumors surrounding the sexual interests of the Deputy Chief and Scarpetta herself. There is a strong undercurrent of lesbian love and deviant sexual practices.
The mystery in this case centers on a badly decomposed body that is discovered in a shipping container aboard a ship docked in Richmond’s deep water harbor. He obviously made the trip across the Atlantic as a corpse, so the mystery immediately takes on an international flavor. A strange tattoo on the body’s decomposing back and some strange aspects of his death – soon matched to the MO of the murder of a convenience store clerk in Richmond – attract the interest of Interpol. Scarpetta and her angry buddy Marino make a trek to Lyon to consult on the case, which Interpol believes involves the strange son of a prominent French family.
Of course they are right and Scarpetta is instrumental in bringing him down. But she does take the night in Paris to bed a young, rich ATF agent that she doesn’t really like. Or maybe she does.
In any case, she screwed him so she can’t be a lesbian, right?
The book is not bad, but not great either. Much of it is a huge downer.
4 out of 10.