About this title: Medical examiner Dr. Kay Scarpetta returns in this harrowing tale of a psychopath who stalks young couples, then murders them in their cars.
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"probably will stop reading this series for sometime atleast. killing off all good characters...i dont like it also another character gets killed off in the next and the ending is bad on personal front. so may be ill come back to it after couple of months! :("
"3.5 Don't know how I missed this one. It reminded me how much more I enjoyed the early Scarpetta books, than the current ones. I still find the repulsive sidekick Merino (is that his name) implausible - not that there aren't repulsive cops, just that KS would have anything to do with him."
"I am beginning to have a problem with Cornwell's books. This one is more about the personal stories of her repeating characters and less about the murder. The ending is horrible and not supported well in the rest of the story. I have a problem with such troubled and unprofessional people rising to the level in their careers that these characters have. People with this many problems don't usually have jobs with such responsibility, especially when they can't seem to put them aside. I'm not sure I'll keep up with this series."
"One of the series featuring medical examiner Dr Kay Scarpetta, this book is surely one of the best. It has the usual cast of characters: Scarpetta herself, Detective Marino, FBI Agent Benton Wesley, plus several others, one being a journalist, Abby, whom we met in a previous title. The forensic science is present here, but not to the point of tedium. Despite Cornwell's grasp of this subject, her greatest strengths are in narrative, character and dialogue, and in this book these elements are unusually well balanced. At some point in the Scarpetta series, Cornwell changed from first to third person narrative. This, the third of the series, is first person.
There are quite a few bodies but, apart from one scene at the end, the deaths have occurred before the book starts, so the book is a surprisingly unviolent read. For me, this improves it. Also, the perpetrator doesn't track Scarpetta down and try to murder her too. There is nothing sensational here but a great deal to hold the reader's interest.
Sometimes Ms Cornwell gives us the benefit of her insights into life. One such case occurs when Marino, with great reluctance, admits to Scarpetta that his wife has left him, and shows her a photograph of the lady in question. 'Doris had a good face and a round, comfortable body. She was standing stiffly, dressed for church, her expression self-conscious and reluctant. I had seen her a hundred times, for the world was full of Dorises. They were the sweet young women who sat on porch swings dreaming of love as they stared into nights magic with stars and the smells of summer. They were mirrors, their images of themselves reflections of the significant people in their lives. They derived their importance from the services they rendered, survived by killing off their expectations in inches, and then one day woke up mad as hell.'
There are many such instances in her books, but I like this one a lot."
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