Postmortem: Scarpetta 1

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His brown eyes finally fixed unemphatically on me. “American’s what he told me. But I get the impression his main interest is plays. Seems he’s in one right now. Shakespeare. Hamlet, I think he said. Says he’s done a lot of acting, including some bit parts in movies shot around here, a couple of TV commercials, too.” Even before Scarpetta’s headquarters has been officially notified about the case, Marino and Scarpetta’s FBI agent husband, Benton Wesley, receive suspicious calls, allegedly from someone at Interpol. But it makes no sense. Why would the elite international police agency know about the case or be interested? It soon becomes apparent that an onslaught of harassment might be the work of an anonymous cyberbully named Tailend Charlie, who has been sending cryptic communications to Scarpetta for over a week.

Postmortem by Patricia Daniels Cornwell | Goodreads Postmortem by Patricia Daniels Cornwell | Goodreads

He muttered in the truncated sentences of a mind fragmented, stunned, “I talked to her on the phone. Last night. She told me she’d be home around twelve-thirty, home from VMC, the ER. I got here, found the lights out, thought she’d already gone to bed. Then I went in there.” His voice rose, quivering, and he took a deep breath. “I went in there, in the bedroom.” His eyes were desperate and welling, and he was pleading with me. “Please. I don’t want people looking at her, seeing her like that. Please.” Patricia Cornwell sold her first novel, Postmortem, in 1990 while working as a computer analyst at the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner in Richmond, Virginia. Postmortem, was the first bona fide forensic thriller. It paved the way for an explosion of entertainment featuring in all things forensic across film, television and literature. Looks that way. Tidy squirrel, don’t you think?” He was holding on to the door frame, leaning forward without stepping inside. “Don’t see nothing in here, like maybe he wiped up after himself to make sure he didn’t leave footprints on the john or floor. It’s been raining all day.” His eyes were flat as they fixed on me. “His feet should’ve been wet, maybe muddy.” After earning her degree in English from Davidson College in 1979, she began working at the Charlotte Observer.And I kept making concessions for the year, like yeah, I bet this DNA stuff was pretty impressive for 1990, and I can kinda understand why she's explaining all this basic PC computer crap...when your story is that tied to technology, of course the effort is going to feel dated at a later time. I worked some time for a computer forensics company, and I kept wondering about the time frame for technology in that field...how easy now to see who accessed what, when, from where, and exactly what they did with it. Charlottesville, where Lori Petersen's husband attends university to obtain a PhD in American Literature Meanwhile in her personal life, Scarpetta must deal with the presence of her extremely precocious ten-year-old niece, Lucy, as well as an uncertain romantic relationship with the local Commonwealth's attorney.

Post Mortem (Spanish Edition) by Patricia Cornwell | Goodreads Post Mortem (Spanish Edition) by Patricia Cornwell | Goodreads

Cornwell uses great research to bring the book to life as well, from detailed forensics, police jargon, and computer-speak. This being before the wonders of GOOGLE, she took a great amount of time to thoroughly present things in a believable way. I cannot attest as to whether it was truthful, but it sounded as such. Anyone (like me) looking for a great series that many people have lauded, should surely begin with this novel and continue on the great journey Cornwell lays out for Dr. Scarpetta. Her series protagonist, Kay Scarpetta, a forensic pathologist, seems as genuine as they come. The novel's prose is written with a level of sophistication above the norm for the genre, and the technical details are as well researched as the descriptions found in the books by Thomas Harris Logically enough, I started with the first of the series. The plot is one we've seen over and over, a brutal serial killer, but the way he is caught is a mind-bender that you won't see in any other similar story. Cornwell received widespread attention and praise for her series of articles on prostitution and crime in downtown Charlotte. From the Charlotte Observer, Cornwell moved to a job with the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner of Virginia – a post she would later bestow upon the fictional Kay Scarpetta. Maybe. Maybe not. It is easy to be observant retrospectively. But most people don’t pay that much attention to every detail of their residences, especially to rooms scarcely used.You can come on in, Doc,” the officer with the video camera was saying. “I’ve got all this on film.” What follows seems a bit of Science Fiction, the unbelievable place of an autopsy being a space-lab at 300 miles high. Something very bad happened and astronauts from the ISS - International Space Station - have to come down and - perform nothing less than a Kay-guided autopsy! In the presence of the President, the Vice President and a lot of Senators Kay gives the guidelines to reveal the cause of the violent death of two lab workers. Absolutely new ground - but not bad to read. Something new, finally. In some ways the killings are connected to the murder of the woman engineer. That at the very end something entirely different is coming out - it doesn't matter much, the book is almost over. My first book from this author, and I'm now convinced that Ms Cornwell reigns supreme as a crime fiction writer. I'm hooked! I'll be reading as much as I can of her works. Pete Marino - detective sergeant in the Richmond Police Department. Described as "pushing fifty, with a face life had chewed on, and long wisps of greying hair parted low on one side and combed over his balding pate. At least six feet tall, he was bay-windowed from decades of bourbon or beer." [4]