About this title: The body was naked, female and found propped against a fountain in a bleak area of New York's Central Park. Her apparent manner of death is chillingly familiar, suggesting that a sadistic serial killer is back at work.
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Description: Good. Light shelf wear and minimal interior marks. Millions of satisfied customers and climbing. Thriftbooks is the name you can trust, guaranteed. Spend Less. Read More. read more
Description: Good. Former Library book. Shows some signs of wear, and may have some markings on the inside. Shipped to over one million happy customers. Your purchase benefits world literacy! read more
Description: Acceptable. Former Library book. Shows definite wear, and perhaps considerable marking on inside. Shipped to over one million happy customers. Your purchase benefits world literacy! read more
Description: Acceptable. Book is in good reading condition. Cover has wear at edges and corners. Spine has wear at edges. Dust jacket has some wear. read more
Description: Good. 0399155163 Former library item may have library binding and show stamps, stickers or other marks. Items not meeting quality expectations may be returned. Due to the large scale of our operation, we do not have access to the specific contents/condition of our items. read more
Description: Good. 0399155163 Former library item may have library binding and show stamps, stickers or other marks. Items not meeting quality expectations may be returned. Due to the large scale of our operation, we do not have access to the specific contents/condition of our items. read more
Description: Good. 0399155163 Former library item may have library binding and show stamps, stickers or other marks. Items not meeting quality expectations may be returned. Due to the large scale of our operation, we do not have access to the specific contents/condition of our items. read more
Description: Good. 0399155163 Former library item may have library binding and show stamps, stickers or other marks. Items not meeting quality expectations may be returned. Due to the large scale of our operation, we do not have access to the specific contents/condition of our items. read more
Description: Good. 0399155163 Former library item may have library binding and show stamps, stickers or other marks. Items not meeting quality expectations may be returned. Due to the large scale of our operation, we do not have access to the specific contents/condition of our items. read more
Description: Good. 0399155163 Former library item may have library binding and show stamps, stickers or other marks. Items not meeting quality expectations may be returned. Due to the large scale of our operation, we do not have access to the specific contents/condition of our items. read more
Description: Good. 0399155163 Former library item may have library binding and show stamps, stickers or other marks. Items not meeting quality expectations may be returned. Due to the large scale of our operation, we do not have access to the specific contents/condition of our items. read more
Description: Good. 0399155163 Former library item may have library binding and show stamps, stickers or other marks. Items not meeting quality expectations may be returned. Due to the large scale of our operation, we do not have access to the specific contents/condition of our items. read more
Description: Good. 0399155163 Former library item may have library binding and show stamps, stickers or other marks. Items not meeting quality expectations may be returned. Due to the large scale of our operation, we do not have access to the specific contents/condition of our items. read more
Description: Good. 0399155163 Former library item may have library binding and show stamps, stickers or other marks. Items not meeting quality expectations may be returned. Due to the large scale of our operation, we do not have access to the specific contents/condition of our items. read more
Description: Good. 0399155163 Former library item may have library binding and show stamps, stickers or other marks. Items not meeting quality expectations may be returned. Due to the large scale of our operation, we do not have access to the specific contents/condition of our items. read more
Description: Good. 0399155163 Former library item may have library binding and show stamps, stickers or other marks. Items not meeting quality expectations may be returned. Due to the large scale of our operation, we do not have access to the specific contents/condition of our items. read more
Description: Good. 0399155163 Former library item may have library binding and show stamps, stickers or other marks. Items not meeting quality expectations may be returned. Due to the large scale of our operation, we do not have access to the specific contents/condition of our items. read more
"Scarpetta, the latest Kay Scarpetta mystery from Patricia Cornwell, is a book that evokes schizophrenic reactions from its readers. It isn't that you love it or you hate it. You love it and you hate it. It does have many faults that seem calculated to rub a reader the wrong way. Among these are characters that are getting old and predicable, too much detail, an almost self-conscious use of medical and computer jargon, too many references to events from prior books in the series, a plot line that is sometimes hard to follow and falls apart at the end, topped off with a ridiculous serial murderer with an unbelievable motive. Cornwell also has the infuriating habit of breaking up events into pieces and drawing out revealing important information in a way that would do taffy pulling proud. And, as many have noted, like the other books in the series, it's studded with ugly and graphic sexual violence.
With all that having been said, I'll confess that I still found Scarpetta to be compulsively readable. Maybe even morbidly fascinating. It's suspenseful in a weird and mysterious way. The plot and the main character are original. I read this book as a break from my usual diet of hard core non-fiction and it served the purpose admirably. It's 500 pages long, but I read it in 4 days. Maybe it falls into the category of mindless entertainment, but nobody writes mysteries the way Patricia Cornwell does."
"I'm sick of this series, so perhaps my review of the book is tarnished due to that. I do feel the serial killer/murder mystery plot of this book is better than Cornwell's last two. I like the conspiracy theory feel to it (someone is always wstching...). Unlike her last two, I felt that Cornwell was on her game with the medical jargon and the thriller-esque aspect of the story.
But I am sick to death of Benton, Kay, Lucy, and Marino. They are all SO MESSED UP!!! And it's kind of incestuous how they follow each other around when one moves (Lucy sets up shop in NYC after Kay and Benton move to NY and Marino is on the case). Benton is a psychiatrist but he can't get his act together. I appreciate that Cornwell has created flawed characters who experience the same foibles we do, but enough is a enough. They need to either figure it all out or split up. It's time for Cornwell to end the series. I'll keep reading the books if she continues to write them, but they have lost the zing that I used to crave when I knew a new one in the series was coming out."
"It took me an entire week to read this 500 page book. I know I had an unusually busy week, but I believe that if I had a couple of 'can't put down books' I would have gotten several read. The plot was good on this book, but Cornwell seemed to concentrate on characters more than plot. I've been reading the Kay Scarpetta books since she first started writing them. I used to really like the characters but it seems as through the years, they've turned dark. I noticed it first with Lucy in the books following the one in which her girlfriend was the villain. Next Benton's personality seemed to change after he reappeared after everyone thought he had died. The final straw was when Pete went over to the wild side. Kay has always seemed a little on the stuffy strange side but what do you expect from a medical examiner. I find any book less entertaining when I don't care for any of the characters and even the new ones in this book didn't do a thing for me."
"I had almost given up on this series, which centers on medical examiner Dr. Kay Scarpetta. I had come to really enjoy the earlier novels. She started her career in state service in Virginia, moved to the Carolinas for a short time to work with her niece, Lucy, and now she is working out of Boston. She and the rest of the characters usually get drawn into murder mysteries and must work to solve them. Her companions include her now-husband Benton Wesley, the earthy Detective Pete Marino, her lesbian & techie niece Lucy Farinelli, among others.
Kay and the gang are pulled in to investigate when a gentleman named Oscar Bane is being accused of murdering his girlfriend. Both Oscar and his girlfriend, Terri, are little people. Oscar has signed himself into Bellevue Hospital, which specializes in care for the mentally ill in Manhattan.
Oscar, an instructor of the hisotry of psychology, is asking for Kay in the hopes that by talking to her and bringing her in on the case that he will be exonerated. He seems to believe that both he and his girlfriend were being stalked, and that whoever was doing that was responsible for his girlfriend's death. This is surprising since all the initial findings point toward his guilt.
The book also allows Cornwell to help her characters recover from the shocking end of the previous book in the series Book of the Dead. Each of them comes to terms with what happened at the conclusion, and this allows them to recover what had once been a tight-knit family.
I know the reviews were pretty tough on this one, as they have been with most of Cornwell's recent books, but I saw a lot of what I liked about her earlier books in it. It was an interesting case. The characters were well-drawn and developed while also being able to focus on the details of what was going on. My only complaint is that I thought this 500-page tome could have been a bit thinner. There were times when Cornwell became a little repetitious with the content, and her editors should have convinced her of the positive effects of tighter righting. There may have been a few too many subplots and side-characters meant to distract the reader (think red herring). With that said, I was never bored.
On an interesting side note, (according to ABC News) it appears that Fox 2000 has purchased the movie rights to the series and will be having Angelina Jolie starring in the role of Kay Scarpetta."
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