1568. Autopsy by Patricia Cornwell

Autopsy by Patricia Cornwell is the first of her novels that I’ve read in about 15 years. Her prior books have been reviewed here, but we experienced a corruption of our data a couple years ago, and those reviews have been lost in cyber space. I was quite excited by the quality of her stories on about novels one through four, but by books five, six and seven, I had grown tired of what I felt was formulaic plot repetition, and I was not impressed with what she was doing with her long-term character development.

 

Autopsy is the 25^th novel about Kay Scarpetta, the Medical Examiner. In this story, Scarpetta had freshly returned to her job as the ME in Virginia. Immediately, her boss was depicted as a bad guy although he was responsible for bringing her home, and then she had her usual struggles with him over the course of the book, as well as her secretary who used to be the boss’ secretary.

 

Scarpetta was surrounded by the same characters of her husband, Benton, her niece, Lucy, Pete Marino, and her sister, Lucy’s mom. In the course of the book, Scarpetta solved the case of another serial killer, and she solved a murder that occurred in an orbiting medical lab in space. The latter case saw her called to the White House to help in that matter. Cornwell did bring the plots to a satisfying conclusion, but I’m not really interested in the story, and it does not get my recommendation for other readers. I expect it will be at least another decade before I choose to read more Cornwell.

 

Scarpetta by Patricia Cornwell

I really liked Cornwell’s early books like The Body Farm, Cruel and Unusual, and Body of Evidence, but I thought she got a bit lost in her last books, the names of which I am no longer certain. I thought that she spent a little too much energy trying to sell/justify/explain lesbianism, and all of that was a distraction to the main story line of those books. After being disappointed with three more books, I decided she was off my list. The only reason that I came back was that a friend handed this book to me after she finished it, and said it was Cornwell’s best. I might not go that far, but the author has found her road back to a captivating story. Cornwell weaves in all the usual characters from Kay Scarpetta, the master forensic pathologist who is now world-famous and a CNN commentator; Pete Moreno, the remarkable detective who has always led a most alcoholic and otherwise more dysfunctional personal life; Benton Wesley, the psychiatrist and serial killer profiler to whom she is now married; and Lucy, her niece who can do anything being a computer whiz who was previously fired by the ATF and FBI. Some time has passed since they were all in the same place and she makes a plausible story of how they get involved again on the same crazy case that requires all of them to solve it. I liked that she gave hints about the traumas that happened among them that drove them apart, but it takes a while to bring out that full story. The end was thrilling, although the very end was rather predictable. I liked this one enough that Ms. Cornwell is back on my list.

WCDon