Sharp Force

 

Holo Man 

Sharp Force
By Patricia Cornwell
Little Brown
ISBN 9781408622596

Warning: No real spoilers but some people might see the contents of this review as such. 

I suppose with the end of the year I’ve just had I could be forgiven for disposing of my usual Christmas rituals but, to be honest, it’s my adherence to at least some of the every day... err.. every year... machinations which allow me to continue in a semi normal state right now. 

Hence, this year’s annual reading kicks off, once again, with the latest of Patricia Cornwell’s Scarpetta books, Sharp Force. And it’s a real cracker and takes a similar spin to novels of the last few years in that, all the action that takes place is pretty much compressed into a very small window of time. And what better time to take place in proximity to when I’m actually reading this one, than this particular story, in which all the action takes place between the closing hours of Christmas Eve and coming to a conclusion towards the end of Christmas Day... with the ‘brief autopsy’ of a summing up for any loose threads and explanations taking place on New Year’s Eve. 

As such, I was wondering when I started reading why we were already in the midst of a detailed pathological examination and, it turns out, that’s because it’s mostly investigations of events happening and a body recovery rather than any long chapters in an autopsy room at a later point in the proceedings. 

This one, of course, includes many of the old and new periphery characters Cornwell’s readers have grown to love... Marino, Dorothy, Lucy, Tron and even the growing malevolence of the AI version of Lucy’s dead lover Janet (which I’m sure will get more out of control as the series progresses). Mostly, though, this is more about Scarpetta and her husband Benton Wesley, working the crime scenes with a little help from the others... and punctuated by growing tension between her long standing right hand man Marino and his wife, her sister Dorothy. 

I’d twigged by about two thirds of the way through the novel that this was going to be one of those stories where the investigation was a prelude to a very quick and, in this case, serendipitous conclusion... rather than a few months of investigation... and, yeah, it was a complete surprise by the end as to the identity of the killer, nicely pulling in a very early ‘background noise’ ingredient to the backdrop of an earlier scene to add some colour (in an almost Dario Argento kind of way but, I’m not saying which movie because that would constitute a spoiler). 

And, as usual, it was a brilliant, entertaining and intriguing read but, once again and, because I know just how much research goes into one of Cornwell’s novels, this one managed to frighten me with technology which has obviously already been invented (just isn’t necessarily available to the public for general use as yet). 

So this one’s ‘nightmare I didn’t know existed’ takes us into the realms of ‘I thought that was just science fiction’ with the killer in this one sending in a sinister hologram to taunt and tease his future victims with. It appears out of nowhere, walking through people’s houses and seems realistic, just isn’t picked up on any camera. And here’s the thing, scary as that is... even though the holograms are conjured into the thin air by manipulating various molecules... the remote technology behind them can also spy on subjects by sending back signals from the hologram. I mean... whaaaat? 

So my best analogy of this would be all those 1960s spy movies, TV shows and cartoons I used to see on repeats as a kid. The villain (and sometimes the hero) would always be able to spy on his progress by summoning up a TV screen show of what he was doing remotely... which would change shots and be edited just like the rest of the movie... with a perfect picture and from absolutely no camera because no single camera would ever be capable of picking up that footage in the first place, especially not at the time in which those movies and shows were conceived... 

Now, however, this is exactly the kind of information (and much more) that these realistic, conjured holograms can bring back (it would seem... I’m pretty sure Cornwell wouldn’t write about this stuff if it wasn’t already in existence, she’s not generally a sci-fi writer) and so, yeah, I just find it all pretty frightening that this stuff is even possible today. Not to mention what would happen if everyone had easy access to this technology (which I’m assuming isn’t quite the case yet, or the entertainment industry would be jumping all over it). It means a person can just go anywhere remotely and gather whatever information/surveillance on a person they wanted with ease. This is not the future I want to live in but there you have it. Oh... and don’t get me started on AI robot dogs, one of which also features prominently here.

But, yeah, scariness aside, as usual Patricia Cornwell is at the top of her game and I can’t recommend Sharp Force enough. Glad she’s still writing a new one each year in time for Christmas and, yeah, hopefully they’ll be another one coming out towards the end of this year for me to devour at that special seasonal time.