Black Notice (Kay Scarpetta)

Cornwell, Patricia

ISBN 10: 039914515X ISBN 13: 9780399145155

Publisher: Penguin Audio, 1999

Synopsis

The discovery of the decomposed body of a stowaway aboard a cargo ship arriving in Richmond from Belgium leads Chief Medical Examiner Kay Scarpetta on a perilous international odyssey from Virginia to Paris on a mission that could destroy her career and threatens her own life and the lives of everyone she loves. Simultaneous.

About this title

Review:

The postmortem is in--Black Notice, the 10th in Patricia Cornwell's Scarpetta series, is a gore-splattered, intensely exciting read. As winter grips Richmond, Virginia, an air of somberness pervades chief medical examiner Kay Scarpetta's world. Her beloved niece Lucy is involved in a dangerous undercover police operation in Miami, and auntie fears for her life. A tyrannical new deputy chief, Diane Bray, wants to get Kay's department under her jurisdiction. Meanwhile, back at the office, someone has tinkered with the e-mail system, stealing Kay's identity, and sending off slanderous and hurtful messages. Emotionally battered, Scarpetta fears she is going insane. Or, could it be that someone is deliberately sowing this harvest of sorrow?

Despite her personal problems, Scarpetta is still the reigning diva at the department of death. She is sent to investigate the putrefied remains of a man found inside a container ship, "eyes bulged froglike, and the scalp and beard were sloughing off with the outer layer of darkening skin." Kay finds strange, animal-like hairs on the man's clothing--the same hairs that she discovers on a murdered store clerk a few days later. In actuality, the bizarre killings extend well beyond Virginia; whoever killed the Richmond victims also butchered people in France. Kay and police captain Pete Marino are whisked off to Paris where they must collect top-secret information from a Paris morgue, and avoid becoming victims themselves.

This macabre tome is the stuff that classic Scarpetta tales are made of: creepy but compulsive autopsy scenes, plentiful plot twists, and the compelling, if slightly more vulnerable chief medical examiner herself. --Naomi Gesinger

About the Author:

Patricia Cornwell's most recent bestsellers include Red Mist, Port Mortuary, and Portrait of a Killer: Jack the RipperCase Closed. Her earlier works include Postmortemthe only novel to win five major crime awards in a single yearand Cruel and Unusual, which won Britains prestigious Gold Dagger Award for the best crime novel of 1993. Dr. Kay Scarpetta herself won the 1999 Sherlock Award for the best detective created by an American author.

About this edition

• Publisher: Penguin Audio
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 039914515X
• ISBN 13: 9780399145155
• Binding: Audio Cassette
• Number of pages: 4