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Blow Fly - Patricia Cornwell
(Read by Carolyn McCormick)
"Please don't go there. The past is the past," sighs New York Assistant District Attorney Jaime Berger, who herself was
introduced in Cornwell's last Kay Scarpetta novel, The Last Precinct (2000). Alas, many of Cornwell's fans are bound to agree. One fascinating nonfiction bestseller (Portrait of a Killer: Jack the Ripper, Case Closed) later, Cornwell now returns to Scarpetta, formerly Virginia's chief medical examiner. From the start, however, the formidable author is up against the equally formidable task of getting her charismatic main character off ice and back in action. We encounter Scarpetta languishing in a crumbling little rental house in Florida. She has taken refuge there and become a private forensic consultant after she was driven from her job for her alleged involvement in the murder of a deputy police chief. The violent death of her lover, Benton Wesley, the brilliant FBI psychological profiler, has left her filled with an unappeasable grief. When the coroner in Baton Rouge asks her advice on a cold case concerning an affluent woman found dead of a drug overdose in a seedy hotel, it seems little more than a diversion. Yet it becomes clear that the overdose may be related to a fresh string of serial killings. Also disturbing Scarpetta's somber peace is a troubling letter from someone out to kill her, the sick and obsessed death-row inmate Jean-Baptiste. When Scarpetta is at last allowed to get back to business, she is a feisty, independent powerhouse whose capacity to concentrate and observe rivals Sherlock Holmes's.
About the Author Patricia Cornwell
(From Wikipedia) Patricia Cornwell (born Patricia Carroll Daniels on June 9, 1956) is the author of a popular series of crime novels, many featuring the fictional heroine "Dr. Kay Scarpetta", a medical examiner.
Biographical information
She was born in Miami, Florida. She is a descendant of Harriet Beecher Stowe.Shortly after graduating Davidson College (in North Carolina), she married her English Professor Dr. Charles Cornwell, 17 years her senior. Dr. Cornwell left his tenured professorship to become a preacher, and Patricia began writing a biography of Billy Graham's wife. They divorced shortly thereafter.
Cornwell has made several notable charitable acts, including funding scholarships to the University of Tennessee's National Forensics Academy, Davidson College's Creative Writing Program, and donating her collection of Walter Sickert paintings to Harvard University.
Eugene Bennett, a former FBI agent, attempted to murder his wife, Marguerite, in 1996 because he thought that she had had an affair four years earlier with Cornwell.
Her writing
The Scarpetta novels include a great deal of detail on forensics. The solution to the mystery usually is found in the forensic investigation of the murder victim's corpse, although Scarpetta does considerably more field investigation and confrontation with suspects than real-life medical examiners. The novels are considered to have influenced the development of popular TV series on forensics, both fictional, such as CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, and documentaries, such as Cold Case Squad.
Procedural details are part of the allure of her novels. Cornwell herself worked at a crime lab in Virginia as a technical writer and computer analyst but not in any official medical or forensics capacity. Her attempts to portray herself as an expert in those fields have caused some bad feelings from those who have actual training and licensing, including Kathy Reichs, who is both a board-certified forensic anthropologist and a crime novelist.
Other significant themes in the Scarpetta novels include health in general; individual safety and security; food; and family. Although scenes from the novels take place in a variety of locations around the U.S. and (less commonly) internationally, the city of Richmond, Virginia features prominently.
Besides the Scarpetta novels, Cornwell has written three more light-hearted police fictions featuring Andy Brazil, as well as a number of works of non-fiction.
Controversies
Jack the Ripper
Cornwell has been involved in a continuing, self-financed search for evidence to support her theory that painter Walter Sickert was Jack the Ripper. She published Portrait of a Killer: Jack the Ripper - Case Closed in 2002 to much controversy, especially within the British art world, where Sickert's work is admired, and also among Ripperologists, who criticize her methods and conclusions. See Portrait of a Killer for further information. However, Cornwell denies a Jack the Ripper obsession in full-page ads in two British
newspapers.
List of works
Note: these are Scarpetta novels unless otherwise noted.
* A Time for Remembering (1983; non-fiction; biography of Ruth Bell Graham; later reissued as Ruth: A Portrait)
* Postmortem (1990)
* Body of Evidence (1991)
* All That Remains (1992)
* Cruel and Unusual (1993)
* The Body Farm (1994)
* From Potter's Field (1995)
* Cause of Death (1996)
* Hornet's Nest (1997; Andy Brazil)
* Unnatural Exposure (1997)
* Point of Origin (1998)
* Scarpetta's Winter Table (1998)
* Black Notice (1999)
* Southern Cross (1999; Andy Brazil)
* Life's Little Fable (1999; children's book)
* The Last Precinct (2000)
* Isle Of Dogs (2001; Andy Brazil)
* Food to Die For: Secrets from Kay Scarpetta's Kitchen (2002; non-fiction)
* Portrait of a Killer: Jack the Ripper - Case Closed (2002; non-fiction)
* Blow Fly (2003)
* Trace (2004)
* Predator (2005)
* At Risk (2006)
