Chaos

September 26, 2016
In bestseller Cornwell’s uneven 24th Kay Scarpetta novel (after 2015’s Depraved Heart), the forensic pathologist investigates the bizarre death of 23-year-old Brit Elisa Vandersteelis, who was riding her bicycle in a Cambridge, Mass., park when she suffered a fatal electrical burn that looks like a lightning strike but isn’t. Meanwhile, Scarpetta’s FBI agent husband, Benton Wesley, is called away on matters of national security, which turn out to involve the sudden death of Gen. John Briggs, a long-time friend of Scarpetta’s and one of the backers of her Cambridge Forensic Center. Electricity seemed to play a role in his death, too, making Scarpetta believe there’s a connection.
Of course, whenever there’s a series of suspicious deaths, the specter of Carrie Grethen, Scarpetta’s nemesis, isn’t far from her thoughts. Coupled with threats she’s been receiving from the mysterious Tailend Charlie, these new deaths appear to fit Carrie’s MO. Lots of cutting-edge forensic detail and some revelatory character moments help compensate for a plot with only occasional flashes of narrative energy. Agent: Esther Newberg, ICM.

Although this is not Cornwell's best mystery, narrator Susan Ericksen works to bring Medical Examiner Kay Scarpetta to life. A young woman bicycling through a park near Harvard is killed in what appears to be a lightning electrocution only hours after casually meeting Kay. At almost the same time, several states away, Kay's mentor is also attacked. Ericksen's pace seems methodical and deliberate, perhaps matching the slower tempo of this latest entry in the Scarpetta series. Kay comes across as just plain tired and cranky, investigative partner Pete Marino is typically pushy, and FBI agent Benton displays his characteristic unflappability. Conversations between the three of them comprise most of this low-action whodunit. N.M.C. � AudioFile 2017, Portland, Maine

June 15, 2016

Odd that 26-year-old Elisa Vandersteel seems to have been killed by lightening while riding her bike along the Charles River one starlit night. Soon thereafter, medical examiner Dr. Kay Scarpetta starts receiving creepy poems about the case from an anonymous cyberbully, and the media go berserk when lab results confirm Scarpetta's implausible lightning hypothesis. With a million-copy first printing.

Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

October 15, 2016
Dr. Kay Scarpetta's talk to the bigwigs at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government is delayed by murder, malicious online posts, anonymous messages, a visit from her sister, and a familiar malefactor from her past in this kitchen-sink 24th installment.Walking through Harvard Yard in the brutal September heat, Scarpetta muses that normal days for a forensic pathologist are shockingly abnormal for everyone else. As if to prove her point, she instantly gets word from her old frenemy Cambridge Police Investigator Pete Marino that a call to 911 complained that she'd just quarreled violently with Bryce Clark, her chief of staff. Scarpetta, already pondering a series of obscure but meticulously timed messages she's had from someone calling himself Tailend Charlie, is in no mood for the impending visit from her disapproving younger sister, Dorothy, whose flight to Boston keeps getting delayed. So it's a perfect time for Anya and Enya Rummage, a pair of dull-witted teenage twins, to report finding a body in John F. Kennedy Park. Arriving at the crime scene, Scarpetta realizes with a shock that she encountered Elisa Vandersteel in passing only a few hours before her death. Is her old nemesis, that monstrous psychopath Carrie Grethen, trying to get at her yet again (Depraved Heart, 2015, etc.) by killing a stranger who crossed her path? And just how was the Canadian-born Elisa, who'd been working as an au pair in tech CEO William Portison's Mayfair home, killed? Even the twins noticed a burning smell coming from the body, but there's no meteorological sign of the lightning strike that would seem to be the most obvious cause for her death. Fans, aware that this particular fatality is incidental to the larger saga of the heroine's epic struggle with the forces of evil, will forgive the absence of a coherent mystery or characters worth caring about. The closest analogue to Cornwell's wildly successful series, in fact, may be a superhero franchise.

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October 15, 2016
Chaos is Cornwell's twenty-fourth thriller starring medical examiner Dr. Kay Scarpetta. The stakes are always high for Kay, and this time out they are raised by a poetic cyberbully who knows way too many intimate details about her, her family, and her forensics team. Fans of the series will not be surprised by the identity of the villain, but if they can last through the interminable opening dialogue and the tedious walk through Harvard Square, they will rejoice when the forensics tent is finally set up and Kay shifts into overdrive. A young woman has been killed while riding her bicycle in JFK Park, her body displaying all the classic marks of a lightning strike. The weather is unbearably hot and humid, but there are no clouds and no thunder. Cornwell serves up a chaos theory all her own that includes an application of nanotechnology that is as terrifying as the disturbed minds of its creators. The ending borders on melodramatic but brings unexpected revelations that will undoubtedly affect her familial relationships in future stories. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Despite some unevenness in her recent efforts, Cornwell continues to sit comfortably at the crime-fiction best-seller table.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)