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 25th 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.
No comments:
Post a Comment