Scarpetta

November 24, 2008
At the start of bestseller Cornwell's plodding 16th thriller to feature Dr. Kay Scarpetta (after Book of the Dead
), the forensic pathologist—who recently relocated to Belmont, Mass., with her forensic psychologist husband—is called to Manhattan's Bellevue Hospital for reasons that don't become clear until she gets there. Oscar Bane, who voluntarily committed himself to Bellevue while denying he brutally murdered his girlfriend, refuses to speak to anyone except the high-profile Scarpetta. Bane, Scarpetta discovers, is obsessed with her. Meanwhile, someone masquerading as Scarpetta is lurking in cyberspace and supplying an online gossip site with dirty secrets about the doctor. For help on the murder case, Scarpetta turns to her computer whiz niece and a macho former colleague whose shocking actions in Book of the Dead
severely damaged his relationship with Scarpetta. With a plot full of holes and frustrating red herrings, this entry falls short of the high standard set by earlier volumes in this iconic series.

December 1, 2008
Dr. Kay Scarpetta celebrates her 20th anniversary as a larger-than-life medical examiner by taking on a case of murder among little people.

Hours after his 4 '1 " girlfriend Terri Bridges observes New Year 's Eve by getting herself strangled, equally short Dr. Oscar Bane checks himself voluntarily into New York 's Bellevue Hospital and begs to unburden himself to Scarpetta. Jaime Berger, the combative sex-crimes prosecutor in charge of the case, instantly has Scarpetta flown in from Boston. Scarpetta swiftly gets Oscar to admit that his injuries are self-inflicted, but nothing he says helps to clear up the mysteries of why Terri, a graduate student in forensic pathology, was obsessed with Scarpetta, or why the fluid sample taken from her body included the DNA of a 78-year-old paraplegic woman from Palm Beach. Stung by a series of scurrilous attacks via an online site called Gotham Gotcha, Scarpetta manfully works the case, but it 's not easy to focus on the killer when there 's so much bad blood among the series regulars: Berger, Scarpetta, her profiler husband Benton Wesley, her niece Lucy Farinelli and Pete Marino, the hot-headed, besotted investigator who assaulted Scarpetta the last time they worked together (Book of the Dead, 2007). Despite dozens of promising clues and reams of forensic evidence, in fact, all roads in the case lead inexorably back to Scarpetta.

The title perfectly suits a challenging mystery that 's only a pendant to the endless soap opera revolving around a heroine who just can 't stop posing for Mt. Rushmore.

(COPYRIGHT (2008) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

December 1, 2008
Twenty years after launching the Kay Scarpetta series, Cornwell returns to form (the last few entries have been disappointing) in this thoroughly contemporary, high-impact outing. Though she lives and works in South Carolina, medical examiner Scarpetta is asked for by name by a man being accused of murder in Manhattan. He says he wont let anyone else examine him for DNA evidenceexceptDr. Scarpetta, who isnationally known after making numerous appearances on CNN. Normally Scarpetta wouldnt abide such an odd request, but her forensic psychologist husband, Benton Wesley, convinces her after evaluating the accused himself. Despite having the victims DNA all over him, OscarBane insists he did not commit the murder and insists to Scarpetta and to anyone else who will listen that he is being electronically monitored by someone or something and implores them to watch their backs. Initially, Bane seems to be just another paranoid criminal, but evidence emerges to show he just might be on to something. All the while, Scarpetta herself deals with electronic scrutiny of a sort when an anonymous online gossip columnist reveals horrible secrets from her past. Can she convince her colleagues to listen to Banes warnings before its too late? The blend of forensic investigation and high-tech intrigue will please Scarpettas legions of fans.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2008, American Library Association.)