Scarpetta: Scarpetta 16 - Hardcover

Cornwell, Patricia

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0316733148 ISBN 13: 9780316733144

Publisher: Little, Brown, 2008

Synopsis

 

 

 

 

 

View our feature on Patricia Cornwell’s Scarpetta.

From America’s #1 bestselling crime writers comes the extraordinary new Kay Scarpetta novel.

Leaving behind her private forensic pathology practice in Charleston, South Carolina, Kay Scarpetta accepts an assignment in New York City, where the NYPD has asked her to examine an injured man on Bellevue Hospital’s psychiatric prison ward. The handcuffed and chained patient, Oscar Bane, has specifically asked for her, and when she literally has her gloved hands on him, he begins to talk—and the story he has to tell turns out to be one of the most bizarre she has ever heard.

The injuries, he says, were sustained in the course of a murder . . . that he did not commit. Is Bane a criminally insane stalker who has fixed on Scarpetta? Or is his paranoid tale true, and it is he who is being spied on, followed and stalked by the actual killer? The one thing Scarpetta knows for certain is that a woman has been tortured and murdered—and more violent deaths will follow. Gradually, an inexplicable and horrifying truth emerges: Whoever is committing the crimes knows where his prey is at all times. Is it a person, a government? And what is the connection between the victims?

In the days that follow, Scarpetta; her forensic psychologist husband, Benton Wesley; and her niece, Lucy, who has recently formed her own forensic computer investigation firm in New York, will undertake a harrowing chase through cyberspace and the all-too-real streets of the city—an odyssey that will take them at once to places they never knew, and much, much too close to home.

Throughout, Cornwell delivers shocking twists and turns, and the kind of cutting-edge technology that only she can provide. Once again, she proves her exceptional ability to entertain and enthrall.

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About this title

About the Author

Patricia Cornwell is one of the world’s major internationally bestselling authors, translated into thirty-six languages in more than fifty countries. She is a founder of the Virginia Institute of Forensic Science and Medicine; a founding member of the National Forensic Academy; a member of the Advisory Board for the Forensic Sciences Training Program at the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, New York City; and a member of the Harvard-affiliated McLean Hospital’s National Council, where she is an advocate for psychiatric research. In 2008, Cornwell won the Galaxy British Book Awards’s Books Direct Crime Thriller of the Year—the first American to win this prestigious award. In 2011, she was awarded the medal of Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters by the Ministry of Culture in Paris. Her most recent bestsellers include Red Mist, Port Mortuary, The Scarpetta Factor, The Front, and Portrait of a Killer: Jack the Ripper. Her earlier works include Postmortem—the only novel to win five major crime awards in a single year—and Cruel & Unusual, which won Britain’s Gold Dagger Award for best crime novel of 1993. Dr. Kay Scarpetta herself won the 1999 Sherlock Award for the best detective created by an American author.
From the Paperback edition.

From AudioFile

All the continuing characters in the Scarpetta series work together in New York City to solve several murders with weird pathology. Medical examiner Kay Scarpetta needs help from her husband, Benton, ex-FBI profiler; her computer geek niece, Lucy; a female prosecuting attorney; and Marino, Kay's estranged former police associate. Some of these folks, like Marino and bit players, are voiced distinctively; some, like Benton, are not. Kate Reading's talent is enlivening long (maybe overlong) conversations and injecting emotions into characters and relationships. Suspect Oscar Banes, a dwarf, is wounded in body and spirit. Mysterious Internet postings about Kay are venomous. A pathology report is read stiffly. And a celebratory lunch at Elaine's brings everyone together to close on an overall good performance. J.B.G. © AudioFile 2009, Portland, Maine

About this edition

• Publisher: Little, Brown
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 0316733148
• ISBN 13: 9780316733144
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 512