Patricia Cornwell

Page Updated: 05/03/03

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Patricia Cornwell - Page 2

Paperback - Warner (1998)

Unnatural Exposure
See Review by Phyllis Davis
Dublin, Ireland and Richmond Virginia: separated by thousands of miles - linked by murder. For Dr Kay Scarpetta a lecture stint in Ireland provides the perfect opportunity to find out if the murders on both sides of the Atlantic are indeed connected. Five dismembered beheaded bodies were found in Ireland years ago - now four have been discovered in the States.
But the tenth corpse in Virginia is different. There are vital discrepancies, and an indication that the elderly victim was already seriously ill. A copy-cat killing. Goulish, perhaps, but not unusual.
And then abject terror grips Scarpetta and her colleagues when the next body is found. The circumstances of death broadcast a clear and horrifying message: the killer is armed with the most lethal weapon on earth - smallpox.
'For all the gory detail Cornwell's novels are oddly comforting. Virtue will out' Frances Fyfield The Independent
'No one is better than Cornwell at blending the details of leading-edge science and old-fashioned blood-curdling horror' Val McDermid Express on Sunday

First British Edition Little,Brown (1997)

Paperback - Warner (1998)

Hornet's Nest
See Review by Val McDermid - Gold Dagger winner & creator of Lindsay Gordon, Kate Brannigan & Tony Hill
Violence is swarming in Charlotte, and Deputy Chief Virginia West has a mood to match. Another out-of-town businessman has been found murdered, a wise-ass detective has taken her parking slot, and her boss is telling her to go out on patrol as escort to a young reporter. In Patricia Cornwell's latest novel, the accent is on entertainment. She adds humour to the action, yet never loses her sure sense of empathy for the extraordinary and intriguing new characters she has created.
'Vintage Cornwell: gripping plot, great characters and ironic humour' Cosmopolitan
'Cornwell's portrait of a bustling small city is believable and incisive' The Times
'Gripping stuff' Woman & Home
'Riveting, stay-up-all-night chiller' Elle
'Believable and incisive' The Times
'Fast-moving, gripping and hugely entertaining' Sunday Telegraph

Paperback - Warner

First British Edition Little,Brown (1996)

Cause of Death
New Year's Eve and the final murder scene of Virginia's bloodiest year takes Scarpetta thirty feet below the Elizabeth River's icy surface. A diver, Ted Eddings, is dead an investigative reporter who was a favourite at the Medical Examiner's office. Was Eddings probing the frigid depths of the Inactive Shipyard for a story, or simply diving for sunken trinkets? And why did Scarpetta receive a phone call from someone reporting the death before the police were notified?
The case envelops Scarpetta, her niece Lucy, and police captain Pete Marine in a world where both cutting-edge technology and old-fashioned detective work are critical offensive weapons. Together they follow the trail of death to a well of violence as dark and forbidding as the water that swirled over Ted Eddings.
'Each of Cornwell's books is just as good as its predecessor' The lndependent
'Vividly compulsive' Frances Hegarty, Mail on Sunday
'The most interesting and singular bodies of work in popular fiction' Mark Lawson, Sunday Times
'A one-sitting read' Cosmopolitan

First British Edition Little,Brown (1995)

From Potter's Field
Christmas has never been a particularly good time for Dr Kay Scarpetta. Although a holiday for most, the festivities always seem to heighten the alienation felt by society's violent fringe; and that usually means more work for Scarpetta, Virginia's Chief Medical Examiner and consulting forensic pathologist for the FBI.
The body was naked female, and found propped against a fountain in a bleak area of New York's Central Park. Her apparent manner of death points to a modus operendi that is chillingly familiar: the gunshot wound to the head the sections of skin excised from the body, the displayed corpse - all suggest that Temple Brooks Gault, Scarpetta's nemesis, is back at work.
But this time Gault isn't satisfied with indiscriminate murder. As Scarpetta scrapes together the meagre clues he leaves behind she realises his actions are becoming more focused taunting almost; letting her know he's still out there, still killing. The sabotage of the FBl's database computer - a computer programmed and run by Scarpetta's niece Lucy - no longer seems coincidental, and with other insidious encroachments into her private life Scarpetta faces a terrifling truth: that this time, the price of failure could be personal.
Calling on all her reserves of courage and skill, and the able assistance of colleagues Marine and Wesley, Scarpetta must track this most dangerous of killers in pursuit of survival as well as justice heading inexorably to an electrifying climax amid the dark, menacing labyrinths of the New York subway. 'America's most stimulating and chilling writer of crime fiction' The Times
'The pathologist of human evil' Observer
'The top gun in this field' Daily Telegraph
'An unusual and rivetingly realistic thriller writer' Daily Mail
'America's most stimulating and chilling writer of crime fiction' The Times

Paperback - Warner

First British Edition Little,Brown (1994)

The Body Farm
Black Mountain, North Carolina - a sleepy little town where the local police deal with one homicide a year, if they’re unlucky, and where people are still getting used to the idea of locking their doors at night. Hardly the place for a serial killer to be stalking, but that seems the most likely scenario when the corpse of eleven-year-old Emily Steiner is found, with a bullet wound to the head and several small sections of skin removed from her frail and abused body.
The execution of the crime bears disturbing similarities to the recent murder of young Eddie Heath in Virginia, and Dr Kay Scarpetta, the Chief Medical Examiner on that case, is called in to bring her forensic skills to bear on this latest atrocity. Fighting the natural assumption that Emily’s murderer is also the man who killed Eddie, Scarpetta’s instinct for the unusual is rudely awakened when another body is found - a local cop who was working on the Steiner case but becomes a suspect himself when the missing pieces of Emily’s skin are found in hid freezer.
But it’s all a little too neat for Scarpetta. The angles have to be covered, and just because the prime suspect is dead doesn’t mean the case is closed…
'Cornwell ...will find it difficult to better The Body Farm' Marcel Berlins, The Times
'There are passages in Cornwell's novels which stop you in their tracks ... [She] deploys prose like a scalpel, cutting cleanly, probing relationships, demonstrating how vital parts - means, motives and compulsions - fit together. She is a disquieting writer whose fiction arrives at impeccable conclusions, but still leaves a smudge of unease' Literary Review