From Potter's Field: Scarpetta 6 (Kay Scarpetta)

this book is amazing. it was an all around exciting book. scarpetta definetly meets my expectations. it was a roller coster of emotions. i couldnt put the book down. i will re-read this book numerous times.

started this series after reading the Temperance Brennan books by Reichs. They seemed to be similar and were. In the beginning. After several of them, her aging and her niece and love life and stories started to go south for me so I gave up after I'm not sure how many. Check for yourself but I think the best ones were in the beginning

All of Patricia Cornwell Books are for great reading. There isn’t one book I’ve come across that wasn’t great. I’m a Crime Scene Investigator and these books are great for individuals that maybe one day would get into Crime Scene Analysis. You can’t go wrong with a Patricia Cornwell Book. Thanks A Million!

Tired characters. Tired plots. Formulaic at best. Cornwall has milked this series and no longer puts any effort into the books. I'll miss Kay and the others but will not put up with the redundancy. That being said, readers that are new to the series will enjoy this book. I would rate it much higher if it was the first of the Scarpetta series that I read.

Summary from Goodreads:

"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 operandi 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.

Calling on all her reserves of courage and skill, and the able assistance of colleagues Marino 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."

My Thoughts:

I am so hooked on this series! I literally am trying to take my time with this series and not just blow through all of the books but it is so hard when the books are this good. The reading experience is different for me compared to other readers because I've read two of the more recent books previously. Now that I'm actually reading the earlier books (and in order) I can see how some of these books are building up to those later books. It is pretty awesome if I do say so myself! The thing that I liked best about this book is that feeling where absolutely anything could happen next. This feeling is actually present in most of the books that I have read by her but it was especially strong in this book. There was this creepy scene in the morgue where I was on the edge of my seat while reading. It was SO intense!! I never know what the characters are going to do or how they are going to react despite being in each book from the very beginning. I don't know how else to describe it. Benton, Lucy, Marino.....heck, they are all mysteries from time to time which really adds just another layer of suspense to these novels. The best part of this book though was that Temple Brooks Gault was back and seemingly on a killing spree. We first read about him a few books back and he was even more terrifying in this book. I may say this with every book but I felt like this was one of the most suspenseful books in the series so far. It was crazy at times and I just couldn't get enough of it!

At this point I'm a huge fan of this mystery series and am enjoying every minute of reading these books. This book was everything that I enjoy in a thriller and mystery all combined into one. It was hard to put down, and I found myself flying through the pages. I really love the way this author writes in such a way as leaves me questioning everything that is going on. I just can't get enough of these books! I already have the next book waiting patiently on my shelves- I won't be waiting long to read it so that I'm able to see what kind of trouble Scarpetta finds herself in next. Highly, highly recommended!

Bottom Line: Yet another amazing addition to this series which is a favorite of mine!

Disclosure: I picked up my copy of this book from my local used bookstore. Worth every penny!

So glad to be done with this extended Temple Gault plot, and it will be interesting to see if Cornwell reverts to a one-mystery-per-book format in the next one. The most fascinating part of this was Kay's interrogation of Gault's parents, and it was over too soon. The rest of the book was made up with extensive travelling back and forth between New York, Virginia and South Carolina. The relationships between Kay and her niece Lucy as well as between Kay and Wesley are not developed or resolved much at all.
I expected the final confrontation with Gault to be climactic, and it was, but there was little denouement or resolution to the tale; Gault's reasons, motivations, most of his history are not explored. Although the chase of him was pretty suspenseful and detailed, I don't feel very satisfied with the case as a whole. Hopefully, though, now that he's been caught, we can get back to the basics of Kay's expertise and finding killers because of clues a Medical Examiner would find on the body.

I always swear I won't read another Cornwell book because my experience with her mysteries so far has been one of wooden characters and abrupt endings. But then I see another of her titles sitting there in a library book exchange or in an airport book rack, and I fall again.

"Potter's Field" proved to be marginally better than some of her others. The book does end rather abruptly, but at least there's something of a build-up to the resolution. However, the characters, including the series' continuing protagonist Virginia's Chief Medical Examiner Kay Scarpetta, are pretty much as wooden as ever. Their activities lack any of the kind of anecdotal detail that might bring them to life. Scarpetta and her niece move with mechanical efficiency across the landscape, accomplishing checklists of often high-tech investigative tasks. This book was written in 1995, but the computer manipulations that Scarpetta's niece executes don't generally seem dated, except for a few references to now-extinct DOS commands. But a reader will likely get an energized sense of momentum by reading through the characters' brisk accomplishments in this case.

The only character who is clothed in some human detail is Marino, the detective who works as Scarpetta's protector and partner. Cornwell somehow manages to make this man sympathetic, despite his outrageous prejudices against minorities, gays, and just about every modern freedom of expression. Despite these attitudes, his presence always enlivens the page.

But we are too soon sucked back into an unrealistic rote. Like every heroine in every Grade B thriller that has ever been produced - Scarpetta refuses to leave her house or to "give up her life" just because a homicidal maniac has been stalking her, knows her address, and is likely to be on his way over. And so the clichés mount.

Neither is there much fine writing here, although Cornwell does occasionally come up with apt, arresting metaphors that, like stepping stones across a shallow pond, keep the reader moving through the pages. Scarpetta comes home to find her belongings have "metastasized" throughout what was once so neat a living quarters. That's an observation most of us can probably identify with. Then as Cornwell flies over Potter's field, she observes that the uniform tombstones look like teeth sticking up out of the ground. Good one!

On the whole though, I'm not sure what has made Cornwell so successful, an inheritor of Agatha Christie's ubiquity in the field of crime fiction. Here, as in her other books, Cromwell does start out with promise. She has a gripping opening sequence, featuring the gruesome work of a diabolically clever and elusive killer. This book also holds out the usual promise that the reader will learn some interesting scientific tracking technique as a result of peering over Scarpetta's shoulder as she performs autopsies and conducts interviews. Such promise isn't very satisfactorily fulfilled in this book though.

However, something else kept me reading "Potter's Field." Here the diabolically clever killer is quickly identified as "Temple Gault." I immediately thought of the refrain of Ayn Rand in her manifesto, "Atlas Shrugged" - "Who is John Galt?" In parallel fashion, I read through this book driven by an interest in finding out "Who is Temple Gault?"

I don't think I got a really good answer to that question by the end of "Potter's Field." I was sort of left wondering why I had once again fallen for spending my time reading another in Cornwell's series. But then maybe the on-going promise of thrills and scientific discovery that propels this book makes it enough of a worthwhile pastime.

I've been an ardent Patricia Cornwell fan, since I read the first of her books, Post Mortem, about two summers ago. Since then, I've been trying to get my hands on her books, in the order that she wrote them, so as to follow the character building that she's done for the Chief Medical Examiner of VA, Key Scarpetta, and her entourage including Det. Marino, Agent Wesley, and her niece Lucy.

However, this book left a bad after-taste in my mouth. The story moves at a very fast pace, but then that's about the only thing that is good about this book. Rest everything is about average. Sadly, Cornwell tries to inculcate fear of Gault in the reader's mind, but nothing much seems to happen to Scarpetta anyway, despite her working in what could very well be the least secure government offices in the world! Just about anyone can break in, at anytime, anyone can make anything disappear, anyone can crack any security protocol and encrypted passwords - one seems to wonder how's the place still standing!

It reminded me of those spoof teenage horror movies, where the favourite quip is "don't open that door...", or "someone was lurking in the shadows, and I was alone...". This book has one-too-many of such circumstances, and I for one found my interest wavering on each of those ocassions.

Forensics is the reason I took to reading her, but this book largely lacks in Forensic Science / Investigation. No foreign material, no strange residue, no inexplicable wound mark... nothing to intrigue the reader.

The climax is high-tech, but again a little lost on me.

P.S.: I'm still wondering WTH does it have to do with Potter's Field?

An average read: 2.5 / 5

I'm reading the Scarpetta books in order, starting with All That Remains. (My library does not have the first two in the series.) From Potter's Field was a big disappointment. I loved it at first. It begins with Kay and Marino working Sheriff Santa's route through bad parts of Richmond. It isn't a Merry Christmas for these poor folks, and it becomes miserable for Kay when she's called to NYC. Temple Gault has struck again, and he's as brutal as ever.

Gault just can't leave Kay alone. He's attacking everyone who is near (and sometimes dear) to her, including her niece and the top-secret computer program.

And I wanted to care throughout this book. And I tried to care. But, when I got to the part where Marino, Lucy, and Janet were playing security in Kay's house, I had to stop. I was bored with the story. I read some spoilers on here, and decided to read the last two pages for myself. ::yawn::

There are not just one or two important subplots, but about 50 gazillion thrown in to the mix. In addition to several murders, there's Frances and her team, Apollonia, Carrie, James, etc.

Kay is still a complete snob. What's worse is that she is still carrying on her affair with the married guy. That causes unnecessary drama. I don't pity her bad choices in men.

I'd say skip this book, unless you are a fan who needs to know how Temple Gault is brought down. Even then, like other reviewers have done, skip the boring parts. Get to the end. You'll be disappointed, but at least you'll know...

In FROM POTTERS FIELD, Temple Gault is back and he's at his worst (which is great news for the reader!). This psychopath is Kay Scarpetta's nemesis and New York is his home turf, which puts her at a definite disadvantage. Gault leaves special clues knowing Scarpetta will know it's his calling card and lure her closer to his trap for her. She knows she's in his web and he's drawing her ever closer but she is not able to stay away, for doing so would keep him free to increase his fatality rate.

This has to be my favorite Patricia Cornwell book. I loved the game of cat and mouse that Gault plays with Scarpetta. I loved the way Scarpetta plays the game determined to win no matter what Gault tries to throw at her. And I especially loved the gift of the scalpel and the chase through the subway tunnels all over New York City (I can't say anymore without giving away too much!).

This book is constant action with no slowing down so the reader can catch his/her breath. It's almost as if the same cat and mouse game being played between Scarpetta and Gault is being copied between Cornwell and the reader. I found myself "reading just one more chapter" so I could figure it all out and Cornwell keeping those answers just a few pages out of my reach. Oh sure, she'd dangle a carrot to tease me, a little morsel to keep me going, but kept me chasing the answers until the end!

If you want a book that will help you relax before you go to bed or a book that will leave you with a feeling that all is wonderful in the world, pick up a book of poetry because this is definitely not the book for you. If you don't mind losing some sleep and want to be catapulted on a journey that is unforgettable, then pick up a copy of FROM POTTERS FIELD today! This story is the definition of a "thriller". Definitely a "stop light book" in my opinion. (If you would like know what I mean by a stop light book, please see my review on Ugly Duckling by Iris Johansen.)

"With each book, her scalpel is getting sharper," the praise from Newsweek on the inside cover claims. After reading "From Potter's Field", as well as six other novels by Patricia Cornwell, I must agree with the reviewer's statement. Cornwell has yet to write a book that disappoints me--so far, each book I have read has been more thrilling and stimulating than the last! This book was no exception. In "From Potter's Field", Kay Scarpetta, Lucy, Marino, and Benton Wesley return to once again match forces with Temple Gault, a notorious serial killer who first surfaced in "Cruel and Unusual", the fourth book in the Scarpetta series. As usual, Cornwell's elements of obvious research, superb characterization, and plot developement were present, making the story seem very realistic. Everytime something new is introduced into the plot, it all builds up until everything comes together at the end. It was fun to reread parts of the book and figure out how it fit into the picture. Overall, just another great Cornwell book. I don't know what else I can say about it that has not already been said.

This 1996 book starts on a cold and snowy Christmas Eve; Santa Claus is handing out presents on an urban reservation. Suddenly there is a shooting, and a night forever silent for an intruder. ME Scarpetta has another customer for the morgue. Afterwards they learn that a serial killer has struck again in New York. Scarpetta and Captain Marino are then summoned from Richmond to work with the FBI.
This book gets up to speed in the first pages, unlike a Hammett or Chandler. The author also tells more of the personal life of the fictional heroine, and her faults. Times have changed.
A known serial killer is operating in NYC, and is stalking the police who are searching for him! Quite a change from the usual story. [Is this believable?] The computer used to track killings has a virus in it; this mirrors the real-life serial killer. Scarpetta's niece is involved with this computer system, and is searching for the virus. [Could someone just out of college be hired for this seemingly important job?] The serial killer then plays games in the morgue!
Scarpetta locates the serial killer's parents, and learns how they wire money to one location. A trap is set but the serial killer at first eludes it. But in the last pages the killer is found and eliminated. The book moves as fast as an action movie.

"Cruel and Unusual" was my first Scarpetta book, and when I looked on the jacket of "From Potter's Field" and saw that it would deal with Temple Gault again, I decided to read it next, hoping to see this killer get what he deserves.

Most of this book was pretty engrossing, even though I did have some gripes. Kay's affair with Benton is disappointing to me since she seems to pride herself on "doing the right thing." Lucy was insufferable in this one. She was younger in "Cruel and Unusual" and I could overlook her idiosyncracies, but she's older now and needs to get a grip - she almost seems to resent or dislike Kay at times but then turns around and loves her again. Also, Lucy's genius IQ and role as an FBI computer program writer who busts crime with her keyboard are beyond corny.

The best part IMO was the scene in the morgue, as others have said. I don't think I would have been able to put the book down if a tornado had ripped through my house while I was reading that part!

It is difficult to believe that a crazy guy high on cocaine most of the time could always be one step ahead of the police and FBI, brutally murdering people right under their noses and getting away with it.

But then the worst came. The ending. Wham, bam, it's over, with Temple Gault's fate implied but none of the juicy details I was hungering for. There wasn't even a page break - one second we're in the subway tunnels of New York, the next we're flying over Potter's Field. Huh?

This was my first Cornwell book. I enjoyed the characters in this story and I look forward to reading more about Scarpetta, Marino, Benton and company. The action was fluid and I was never sure where Gault, our killer, was going to turn up next.
Cornwell is detailed and this lends credibility to the plot and circumstances. The events are gruesome, but this is a coroner we are reading about, so that is to be expected. Cornwell does not exhaust the reader with gore and that made the subject matter easier to handle.
The one criticism I do have is that the story moved so fast that I felt I was sometimes missing something. I think I just have to get used to Cornwell's writing style, and I maybe should have started the series in a chronological order. Nonetheless, a satisfying read, and I would recommend the Cornwell series to others, worthy of 4 stars.

This book had so much potential. Cornwell crafted a great plot with this one. I agree with an earlier reviewer that there were several things that were unrealistic in this one. However, the plot was so good and the action was pretty tense, so I was willing to overlook those details.
I was honestly enjoying the book. Then I came to the ending. I had read the Scarpetta series in order from Postmortem to this one. Her serial killer Gault appears in several of the prior books, and the Scarpetta vs. Gualt finale happens here. I won't give it away, but let me say I was so disappointed that I quit reading the series.
The poor ending of this book, combined with the unrealistic events and general lack of research by the author in all her books has made me decide not to read anymore from Cornwell. With books I haven't read by better authors like DeMille, Deaver, Connelly, and Crais I don't want to waste my time with below average books.

Christmas Eve in Central Park--Temple Brooks Gault stands over his latest victim, washing his bloody hands in the snow. Pleased with his new kill, he lifts the heavy steel of an emergency exit and disappears into the fetid tunnels of the New York subway system.

In Richmond, Dr. Kay Scarpetta, chief medical examiner of Virginia and consultant for the FBI, is in the midst of a late-night autopsy at the morgue when the call comes: Gault, the sadistic psycopath who has eluded capture for years, has struck again. For Scarpetta, her worst nightmare returns.

She and longtime FBI and police collegues Benton Wesley and Captain Pete Marino fly to the eerie early-morning scene, where they immediately recognize Gault's grizzly handiwork. But no seems to know his bald female victim, who's naked body has been propped up against a frozen fountain. It makes no sense that she apparently disrobed in the bitter cold without a struggle and walked barefoot over snow to her death.

While Scarpetta sorts through strange forensic evidence, including an uncommon thread pattern and extremely rare gold dental restorations, Gault kills again. But the prey he ultimately seeks is Scarpetta for it becomes inscreasingly apparent that he is as focused on her as she is on him. It may be possible that he kills to impress her, and that he's trying to get at her through her young niece, Lucy, who is the brains behind CAIN, the worldwide FBI computer network.

Throughout what proses to be Scarpetta's most frightening chase,

she can almost sense the evil, electrical presence of her nemesis. But when she draws close, he slips back into the darkness, waiting for the time when at last they meet...

Christmas is always a notoriously bad time for Kay Scarpetta, Chief Medical Examiner of Virginia and consulting forensic pathologist for the FBI. When Temple Gault, a cunning serial killer whose killing spree began in Richmond several years earlier, resurfaces in New York with the murder of a female transient left in frozen Central Park, Scarpetta jumps head first into the investigation. The identity of the homeless woman becomes top priority, and when it is discovered who she is, the investigation is spun into a radical new direction. Meanwhile, Gault has set his sights on Scarpetta herself...leading to one final, terrifying encounter in the fetid tunnels below the city.
A fascinating book with wonderful characterization, grisly accuracy and a high-voltage, suspensful ending. The Scarpetta series is the best! When it comes to crime fiction, no one does it better than Cornwell.

The plot develops nicely then ends abruptly with an unsatisfying ending. It seems to the reader as if the author had reached her contractual page limit and slapped an ending onto the book. A superhuman villian was terminated too easily. The method of capture was not adequately developed. Several promising themes were not followed up by the author, especially the entriquing possibility that through genetic testing Gault's uncle may have been his father or the reason for the military being interested in the investigation. The author took one of the least interesting possibilites and handled it in a below average formulaic manner

I recently got hooked on Patricia Cornwell's series of novels featuring Kay Scarpetta, and I thought "From Potter's Field" was excellent. The plot was terrific, and the characters are so real. After reading the book you feel like you know them. Cornwell also does a great job of making the crimes and detailed as possible. And her evil character Temple Gault is one of the most frightening fictional characters I've ever come across. My advice is that you definitely read this book, but only if you've read at least one of the previous novels so that you're familiar with Gault, and several of the incidents that play a part in this story line.

From Potters Field is one Patricia Cornwell's worst book she has written. It's not the characters, nope. It's not the writing that is wrong. It's the story that makes the book disappointing.

Temple Gault has struck again. This time we know this for sure. Both the readers and Kay Scarpetta do. Someone from Lucy's past is also back. The problem with this book is that Gault is not a strong enough villain to carry this book. He is not scary or very threatening. It's not exiting. Partly because we never get into his head we are always inside Scarpetta's. Even if Cornwell did venture inside his head I'm not sure if it would be that exiting. For a killer on the loose plot its very weak, of coarse the forensics are very good and original. But for the most part a very disappointing Scarpetta novel.

I listened to the tape version, which is pretty good for getting you to the beach, etc. There is a strong narrative drive that carries you along. However, having the text read to you highlights some of the lack of "tightness" that good editing could have fixed. Also, please don't TELL us that Gault is the worst murderer of the century, SHOW us. Prove it! My personal quibble is that when our heroine is talking with a woman's father and he asks if his daughter is dead, Kay answers with a flat yes, when at most she's got a hunch as to the identity of the dead woman. This is inconceivable for a forensic pathologist whose specialty is not only what she knows, but what she can prove. I'd probably listen to another Scarpetta book on tape, if I got it from the library.

Did you ever read Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand? Few people have, because it's long and it's dull, something about Rand's philosophy of man against society seen through the eyes of John Gault.

Now Ayn Rand ends up in Inspector Penn's bookcase and Temple Gault ends up with a scalpel in his thigh, riding the rails, so to speak.

Usually, authors describe villains who we come to dislike. Cornwell's villain, this coke-snorting psychopath, ends up surrounded by all the forces known to man, in New York City anyway. The FBI, the city police, the transit police, you name it. I ended up rooting for the guy to escape, that's how repelled I was by Cornwell's climax, or was it an anti-climax? Was it nothing more than a severed femoral artery?

I did learn something from this book: the subways in New York are confusing and homeless people can sleep there. Oh, and I learned that computers have evolved a lot since this book was written.

So to sum up, I don't know which book was more boring, this one or Atlas Shrugged, but neither one is really worth reading, I'd say. Diximus.

Like the reviewer from Nova Scotia, this was my first Patricia Cornwell novel. I found myself liking the characters, especially Kay Scarpetta, and the plot's good, as is the writing. But I felt that it was a bit like arriving half way through a party. Everyone seemed to know each other and I had a bit of catching up to do (since it was my first time). It was also quite detailed, and I found myself looking back to pick things up. Perhaps I didn't read it quickly enough. But on the other hand that might have been because it wasn't quite as absorbing as it might have been.
I'll try another Cornwell book in a few weeks and see how I feel.

Patricia Cornwell did it again. This is the best of hers that I have read so far. It only took me two days to read the entire book, which usually says a lot for me.

It will be a bit hard to really say much about the story without giving anything away, but let's just say Temple Gault is at it again and he is worse than you have ever imagined. If you do not know who Temple Gault is, he is a serial killer that was introduced in the last two books, Cruel and Unusual and The Body Farm. You will want to read those before you jump into From Potter's Field.

Although I enjoy Patricia Cornwell's style and
would have loved to read another of her books,
I cannot stand the "better-than-thou",militaristic,
amoral, atheistic, adulterous lascivious feminism
that is being promoted in this book. My mother
and sister are feminists and they go to church
every week, care for their children and husbands,
remain unconditionally faithful to their spouses,
carry themselves gently, are very loving and, most
importantly, desire equal rights with and not
superiority over men.

This depressingly inept novel is devoid of interesting characters and the plot is so ludicrous that only curiosity about how much worse it can get keeps one reading to the end. And Cornwell does not disappoint--it gets worse and worse and worse, until a conclusion that is as contrived and pointless as any in fiction. Another reviewer on the store called this book drivel, but that was perhaps too kind an assessment. This is the lamest book I have ever read.
Each character is assigned one trait--Marino is bigoted, Lucy is angry, Benton is beleaguered--with the exception of the star of the show, Kay Scarpetta, who seems to have drawn two traits--stupidity and a major shopping addiction (dropping brand names is her hobby).
A brief list of plot sillinesses: can you believe that the FBI would not know the most basic facts about "the nation's most wanted serial killer"--that he has a twin sister and a famous uncle?; can you believe that the FBI would set up an elaborate trap using NYC subways because they could not risk a shootout? (why not just arrest him as he leaves his apartment building, once they have found that?); can you believe that a trained law enforcement person would leave her gun lying around as many times as the dimwit heroine does in this book?
Worse than this are the many things that Cornwell throws in that end up having no role in the book--a sick mother in Florida, a subplot abpout her sidekick's love life, her niece's lesbian romances.
This book is all filler, no substance. They must be paying her by the word. The real mystery is why Cornwell has recidivist readers.

Another great book from Madame Medical Investigator Author Patricia Cornwell. Always well-researched, this time the book causes Dr. Kay Scarpetta, Marino and of course, FBI Agent Benton Wesley to investigate the death of a frozen naked woman propped openly in Central Park. Their path leads them to the parents of a psychotic serial killer, one of whom can see nothing wrong about her son and the other parent who would only see his if pointing a shotgun at the son's face. The woman's identity is a shock, as is Scarpetta's handiness with a side-arm. A must-read!

I am currently set to read the next Kay Scarpetta novel, "Cause of Death" and I can't wait. After reading the previous novels and enjoying them, I must say that "From Potter's Field" ranks among three of my favourite Scarpetta novels along with "Body of Evidence" and "The Body Farm". As with every novel in the series, Patricia Cornwell's writing is crisp and entertaining, even if the ending of this book is quite silly. If you want an entertaining, gripping read, try "From Potter's Field" and every novel in the Kay Scarpetta series.

Kay Scarpetta seems to be a very unhappy person at times, but she does get involved in some dandy murder mysteries--and this book is one the best in the series!
Temple Gault is still on the loose, focusing this time on Kay and her niece, Lucy. Temple likes to kill just for the thrill of it and never leaves any clues.
He centers in now on Kay Scarpetta, and it is up to her to stop him in matter what.
This book defines "thriller" and I could not put it down - especially the scene late one night in the morgue. What happens? Read and find out. You won't be sorry.

I have read almost all of Patricia Cornwell's series with Kay Scarpetta and if you liked her other books, you will probably enjoy this book as well. It has the same feel as the others except I find the adultery that Kay continues to commit inconsistent with her strict sense of right and wrong. Marino is always a great character you can easily picture in your mind and I found the scene with the police at the morgue particularly good. The ending was a bit of a let down. However, I'm still hooked and will continue to read her books.

Well, that's no fun. Honesty is the best policy, right? This was the first of Patricia's books I had the displeasure to become acquainted with. I've tried reading another of her works, but I can't get over the simplistic writing with unnecessary adjectives thrown in for no apparent reason except, perhaps, to make the sentences longer and make the reader suffer from the protracted tripe. More than that, this book failed to make me care about the characters or about the outcome of the story

This was the first Scarpetta Novel I read. I was half way through the first chapter when I went back to the store and bought all the books in the series that came before. This is the best there has been. This book delves into the mind of a sadistic killer, Temple Gault. It can not get more terrifying than starring into his dead ice blue eyes. If you are into thrillers this is one that will keep you up all night and not just reading. Guaranteed to make you jump at any sound.