Depraved Heart

October 5, 2015
In bestseller Cornwell's stirring 23rd novel starring Dr. Kay Scarpetta (after 2014's Flesh and Bone), what at first appears to be an accident quickly turns to murder once Scarpetta determines that Chanel Gilbert, the grown daughter of Hollywood producer Amanda Gilbert, didn't simply fall while trying to change a light bulb in the historic house Amanda owned near the Harvard campus in Cambridge, Mass. Meanwhile, Scarpetta receives a mysterious text, seemingly from the cell of her technical entrepreneur niece, Lucy Farinelli, with a video link showing Lucy's FBI dorm room almost 20 years earlier. It's a surveillance camera clearly planted by Carrie Grethen, Scarpetta's archenemy, who was Lucy's one-time mentor and lover, and now sociopath Carrie is sending potentially incriminating video to Scarpetta at the same time Lucy's nearby house is being raided by the FBI. Scarpetta's current case, Lucy's troubles with the Feds, and Carrie's spooky blast from the past are all on an inevitable collision course, and Cornwell shows surprising restraint in reining in her plot and keeping it tightly focused on her well-developed core characters. Agent: Esther Newberg, ICM.

October 15, 2015
At a crime scene, medical examiner Dr. Kay Scarpetta gets a text from her niece Lucy's emergency number. Scarpetta breaks protocol and checks it out. But it's not from Lucy. The text links to a video of her niece, apparently filmed nearly two decades earlier and seeminglythis chills Scarpetta to the boneshot by Carrie Grethen. Series fans will remember Grethen, the deeply psychotic woman who was at one time Lucy's mentor and lover (and who appeared as a major antagonist in a few previous novels in the series). Is the video, which was clearly filmed without Lucy's knowledge, a threat of some sort? Did Grethen put in motion, many years earlier, a plan that is only now coming to its culmination? Kay has a potentially high-profile case on her handsthe daughter of a Hollywood bigwig has died under suspicious circumstancesbut can she focus on it when her niece's life might be in danger? Dark and cleverly plotted, the latest Scarpetta novel should definitely appeal to loyal series fans. Newcomers might want to check out the backlist first to bone up on Kay, Lucy, and Carrie's rather complicated history. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Cornwell's track record assures demand for her latest Scarpetta novel wherever books are sought.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)