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. 

Identity Unknown

The Long Goodbye
Yellow Brick Road

Identity Unknown
by Patricia Cornwell
Little Brown
ISBN 9781408732618

Warning: Very small spoilers.

So, my annual Christmas ritual of receiving and reading the latest Patricia Cornwell novel is once again complete. This time it’s the latest entry into her long running Dr. Kay Scarpetta books, who is such a popular character that Nicole Kidman will soon apparently be playing her on our TV screens (although, honestly, the more I hear about the production the less I’m liking it, particularly in terms of casting and also time settings... I’ll try not to mention it again in this review and stow it until the proper time to talk about such things).

Identity Unknown is set in the springtime and utilises all the usual suspects of Cornwell’s growing list of regular characters... so her husband Benton, her old partner Marino, her sister Dorothy, her niece Lucy and her newest regular, Lucy’s special agent colleague Tron. And I’m pleased to say Lucy... my favourite character in the series of books, who I’ve read growing up over the novels from being a teenage computer nerd into someone who invents the software and systems that are used on a daily basis in the shadowy underworld of the world’s top security organisations... takes a much more active role, or is at least present most of the time, throughout the course of the novel.

Like a fair few of Cornwell’s most recent, gripping mysteries, this one takes place in a very small timeframe. Not as short as some of the novels but, if my calculations are correct and not including the final ‘Ten Days Later’ section, I’d say the action of this one takes place around two and a half days from the opening of the story, when Kay is called away from her autopsy rooms to go and recover the body of a former lover who has been dumped from a UAP onto the yellow brick road. Specifically, UAP stands for Unidentified Anomalous Phenomenon and it’s what the kids are calling UFOs these days. Could this case link to the murder of a child she is currently investigating? And could the fact that the body has been dumped on the yellow brick road of an abandoned theme park based on The Wizard Of Oz mean the case is even more closely connected to Kay than she initially thinks?

Shenanigans ensue as the obvious suspect is Kay and Lucy’s old arch enemy Carrie Grethen, who seems to have taken herself off the government radar again. Is she responsible or is there some other threat masterminding the series of brutal coincidences as the case unfolds and another death happens? Kay is yo-yo’d around from the crime scene to Langley to NASA (although she doesn’t, alas, meet Callie Chase from one of Cornwell's other series of novels there) and even to an underwater body retrieval as she and her friends work the case.

The thing I like about Cornwell is that, along with the healthy dose of imagination required to write, she always researches her stuff throroughly (as indicated by the photos she shares during her research on Twitter) and I tend to think of her as someone on the cutting edge of things which, I suspect, often bleeds into her novels. So when, as expected, the UFO does not turn out to be of extra-terrestrial origin, she also throws in a little incident of Kay’s distant history which tends to throw some positive confirmation that something alien in origin did, in fact, happen during the famous Roswell Incident. So that’s kind of interesting and of note, I think.

Other than that, a short review because, well, Cornwell is undoubtedly the queen of the mystery thriller and they don’t come any better than this. Scarpetta’s first person narrative flows along at a rate of knots, as usual and, there’s also a section when, once the villain in this book (and I won’t tell you who it actually is) is caught, there is still more action to be had as wheels turn and a side character tries to come along and take out Kay and Marino. And I’m not telling you how that goes either.

All I will say is, Identity Unknown is another highly addictive piece of storytelling in a series of novels which mostly all are as good as they get. If this one had its covers covered in glue it would not make the book any more ‘unputdownable’ than it already is. If you’re a fan of these novels then this is more of the same and is definitely worth your time. Now, I have the long waiting time to get through until I can get another Cornwell novel for next Christmas.

Unnatural Death

Sasquatch
Nightwatch

Unnatural Death
by Patricia Cornwell
Little Brown
ISBN: 9781408728697

Warning: Some very slight spoilers.

And once again it’s already time for my annual ritual, starting the new Patricia Cornwell book I’m inevitably gifted on Christmas Day. This year’s novel, Unnatural Death, sees her return to the exploits of her most popular literary character, Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Kay Scarpetta, plus various of the other much loved regular characters who make up the rich background tapestry of the Scarpetta novels... including Lucy, Benton, Marino and even Kay’s sister Dorothy, who you remember is now married to Marino.

Like many of her recent novels (well, I say recent, she’s been doing this kind of thing for at least a decade and I’m sure if I went and revisited her early works, it’s something I’d be more aware of now), this one is set in a very small time frame. The majority of the novel takes place over a 24 hour period... with an epilogue chapter taking place eight days later. Indeed, it takes Cornwell well over a hundred pages to get her central characters to the ‘scene of the crime’ in this one but, as you would expect of a writer of Cornwell’s high calibre, none of this journey is wasted and it helps set up a truly uneasy air about why this particular double homicide... the Unnatural Death of the title... is unusually disturbing. Not least of which is the general environment where the bodies need to be recovered from... which is both hard to get a helicopter to without crashing it and, similarly hazardous due to all manner of reasons I won’t detail here.

As almost a distraction... but I know how well Cornwell researches her books... we also have evidence uncovered that a Bigfoot (aka Sasquatch) is in the area of the scene of the crime and, normally I would act the sceptic here as that being a fantastical element of the story but, well, I trust this woman’s research and if she says there really are such things... I’m going to take her word for it. There is apparently more evidence to suggest yay rather than nay these days, it would seem. And while the evidence of the presence of this species near the murder site is ruled out straight away as being something which the Sasquatch would have had a hand in regarding the double murder, there are also some nice, unexplained things which also happen when Scarpetta and her colleagues are recovering the bodies, which are nicely speculated on by the end of the novel. Let’s just put it this way, there is a suggestion that Big Foot doesn’t always have to be hostile and can, perhaps, even be helpful.

Let me also say that the fight comes to Scarpetta’s door, in small and disturbing ways, long before the scene of the crime is left and the bodies recovered. And then things get even grimmer when Kay suddenly finds herself performing an autopsy in front of a virtual audience in a special unit erected for such a procedure, as she and another character are pulled into a certain ‘confidence’ that neither of them has welcomed into their lives.

Talking of which, I don’t want to say too much about this set of scenes and the chills they may invoke in some readers but I will say that they will probably affect and be present as a caution in Scarpetta’s life for at least another novel or two and, furthermore, those readers who have been with the character throughout her long fictional history will certainly appreciate where things are heading... once a certain set of previously ‘false information’ has ben revealed.

All of which leads ot a couple of nasty incidents based on high tech threats and the usual mix of piece by piece, clue by clue deductions that inevitably lead Scarpetta and her husband Benton to inadvertently put themselves in harms way at certain points in the narrative. There are also a few younger characters which, I think may have been seeded into the text a book or two ago, to also live on as future regulars in the series... or be cannon fodder, who knows because, with the level of future threat now uncovered for Scarpetta and her loved ones, the resolution of that particular problem may well seem a little light and miraculous if at least some characters the readers care about don’t die as part of that solution.

And there you have it... I don’t want to say much of anything else about Unnatural Death other than to assure lovers of the writer and her characters that this is yet another, top notch, addictive Scarpetta novel by one of the greatest living thriller writers. I absolutely loved this one.

Livid

Livid Let Die

Livid
by Patricia Cornwell
Sphere Books
ISBN: 9781408725818

Warning: There will be some spoilers of a plot element which makes itself known fairly early on in the book but, yeah, if you want to go in completely spoiler free then please don’t read this.

Livid is the latest in Patricia Cornwell’s long running series featuring forensic pathologist Dr. Kay Scarpetta and, as regular readers of this blog may remember, it’s also my annual Christmas ritual to start the new Cornwell book on Christmas day.

This one takes place in just a couple of locations and once again, like many of Cornwell’s recent books, it takes place over a very short space of time. This one, for example, is written first person view from Scarpetta’s point of view (as is usually but, not quite always, the case) and takes place over the course of... not quite two days. Maybe around 30 - 35 hours of a time frame done in ‘real time’, or as near to that as you can get with via the written word. This kind of approach seems to suit Cornwell well and makes for a very intense and suspenseful time for the reader. As is sometimes the case on these things, there is one last follow up chapter which takes place a week later and which the writer uses to explain and sum up the various plot threads and address their resolutions.

This one starts off with the end of a day in court where Kay is being picked on and badgered as a witness by the prosecution of a very high profile case, which has transformed the locality of her and her crew into a powder keg of an angry population who could get violent at any time. However, while the case in court is important, it’s what happens away from the court, simultaneous to those events, which bring in the meat and bones of the book. The Judge in the trial is a very old friend of Scarpetta’s and, while this is going on, the Judge’s sister is found murdered in a macabre manner at the family home. It’s up to Kay, pushing against political red tape which means her no good outcome, to investigate as she begins to uncover a weaponised ‘microwave’ gun and stumbles headlong upon yet another corpse in her investigation.

It’s nice that nobody really gets left out in this one in terms of Cornwell’s extended Scarpetta family, either. Chiefly it’s about Kay and her right arm Marino investigating these things but, the plot also involves her niece Lucy (one of the best characters in these books), Kay's criminal behaviour specialist husband Benton Wesley and even her annoying sister Dorothy, who by this point in her adventures is married to Marino. Plus the usual extra cast of colourful and deadly characters who are both aiding and abetting her investigation.

It’s well written and, unlike other brilliant crime writers who end each chapter on a revelation, is fairly straight on with the narrative, allowing the unfolding events to do the work rather than resort to mini cliffhangers to keep the audience engaged (which is, honestly, not a problem for me, I love that kind of writing also but it’s nice to see a master at work who doesn’t feel she needs to do that all the time). It’s also, as I’ve gotten used to with Cornwell lately, quite frightening. Not because of the scenarios she dreams up but because, as well connected and meticulously well researched as Cornwell always is, you know you are looking at something which could indeed happen or, quite probably, has happened. So when you read about a microwave weapon that can take out security cameras and cook your brain at the same time without any normal means of detection... you have to start worrying about the state of weaponised technology we’ve reached now. I mean, the idea of a directed microwave gun is certainly nothing new... I was reading about it in Doc Savage novels of the 1930s where he was faced with such a threat (although I don’t think the character had a modern name for such a weapon until a partial sequel to a particular pulp written in the early 1990s). But the fact that Cornwell is now writing about them as a matter of fact is absolutely terrifying.

Now, I have one nit pick with this one and that’s when Scarpetta uses the phrase ‘reasonable certainty’. My dogmatic brain tells me that you are either certain about something or not. However, it might be that it’s a specific legal term and... oops, I just blundered. Here we have writing as it happens folks. I just did a Google search on the phrase mid sentence and, it’s indeed a legal term and not an error after all. So, yeah, if I’m nit picking anything at all it’s maybe a clarification of that for the less informed reader but... hmm... yeah... running through my own wet paint and moving swiftly on. Forget I said anything. Don’t talk down to the readers, for sure.

Okay... my only other thing worthy of perhaps me mentioning is that I was pretty sure the book was going to have a big set piece of an end game where Scarpetta herself is targetted with the microwave gun and, yeah, it’s a cliché perhaps but that definitely happens and, frankly, I wouldn’t have it any other way. This is a writer giving her audience what they want in terms of the end pay off and Cornwell certainly doesn’t steer away from it here.

And that’s me done for another year on Patricia Cornwell’s latest novel, Livid. It’s a ritual I enjoy going through time and again and one of the bright and comfortable spots of my life, truth be told. Once again the writer delivers a taut, suspenseful and utterly compelling page turner of a mystery which rewards the reader at every twist and turn. And, as usual, I can’t wait ‘til the next one.

Autopsy

Weightless
Autopsy
Turvy

Autopsy
by Patricia Cornwell
Harper Collins
ISBN: 9780008467258

Warning: Some ‘how the characters have moved on’ spoilers included.

I’m so happy to finally, after a good few years, be able to return to what has been my annual Christmas ritual for some years now... starting the first chapter or so of the latest of Patricia Cornwell’s Dr. Kay Scarpetta hardbacks. Autopsy sees Scarpetta, one of my favourite contemporary characters, returning to her old stomping ground of Virginia, taking over as the chief. However, it’s not an appointment which everybody is happy with and, as she tries to get a handle on what can only be described as ‘adverse interpersonal working conditions’ (yeah, had enough of those in my time), she becomes embroiled in a number incidents which are all connected although, at least from how I understood it, not all connected in the same way.

So Cornwell weaves a tale of a woman found with her head bashed in and her hands removed... a neighbour of her regular character Marino. Marino has both followed Scarpetta and her husband Benton to Virginia and also, it would seem, married Scarpetta’s sister (aka Lucy’s mother). Also added to the mix are a poisoning which Scarpetta has to deal with up close and personal, not to mention what looks like a double murder in space, where Scarpetta has to remotely instruct from a video link as two astronauts try to work a crime scene with her help. And it’s all gripping stuff.

Also like a fair few of her Scarpetta mysteries of recent decades, the time frame in which all the events take place is a small one. Not as small as some of them but certainly this one takes place over no more than a few days, in the December run up to Christmas. Also fitting her usual pattern, the solution to the whole mystery... or in this case, set of mysteries, is left until the last minute. It rarely seems rushed but it’s quite an effective sprint to the finishing line, as it always is. Happily enough, I didn’t arrive at a solution before the main protagonist did (and I don’t think I was armed enough to be able to, in all honesty) but I did get myself believing I would this time due to my concentrating on two specific clues which, while not red herrings, were not going to be all that workable to the reader, I would say (and that’s not always a bad thing if you don’t want to tip off your audience too quickly).

And it’s the usual, intriguing tale told from Scarpetta’s regular first person world view of things but, it has to be said, it’s also quite scary. Not scary because of the various murders and so on which come to light but, scary because I completely trust this author, due to her various life experiences and thorough research, to know what she’s talking about in some of the more, up to the minute stuff. Unlike some creators have been doing, this story is firmly set up in the real world and in real time... so the characters tend to move on with their lives between books. In this one, my favourite supporting character Lucy Farinelli (who Cornwell’s legion of fans have all read about as she grew up in the books) is staying on the same property as the good doctor herself. The reason being that this book is set firmly in a post-outbreak world. The pandemic is still, as it is, thriving and Lucy’s young girlfriend and their small child have both been to London, caught Covid and died between books. I read with worry as Cornwell describes just how truly bad the Coronavirus is in London, with mass burials etc and, as I noticed the information spinning much more ‘on the nose’ than we are getting on our own news over here in the UK... I was reminded once again how badly off we are now in this pandemic. Because if there’s one thing I trust more than the news being reported at the moment, it’s Cornwell’s research into what’s really going on.

So that element is quire scary and, indeed, so is the way Lucy has chosen to deal with the death of her lover. She basically talks to her all the time as an AI version on her computer... one who is almost impossible to tell from the real life model in terms of behaviour, responses, look and resourcefulness. Almost like having the real person, now deceased, standing in the same room as you. I’ve no doubt, as Scarpetta worries about how commonplace it will soon be for this technology to be commercially available that Cornwell probably knows it’s already here and it won’t take all that long to trickle down into the public domain. I’m used to her dealing with cutting edge technology a year or two before we realise it’s already here. Stuff which seems like pure science fiction when she first published it has turned out to be hard science ‘already with us’ on more than one occasion. So, yeah, this is an interesting and perhaps worrying thing to be reading about but... I do appreciate the heads up, for sure.

Interestingly, at a high level, presidential meeting where Scarpetta works a crime scene in space, remotely, I found it similarly interesting that the people in power are not ruling out the idea that the problem they are facing in space might be extra-terrestrial. Also a scary but not unexpected attitude given various little nuggets of information being let slip to a ‘Covid distracted’ public of late.

Of course, with Scarpetta now moving in these circles, one has to wonder how long it will be before she comes face to face with Captain Calli Chase, the lead in protagonist from Cornwell’s other main series of books at the moment (reviewed by me here and here). I thought it might even happen in this very novel but, for the time being, the two are not quite inhabiting each other’s personal universe as yet (although I suspect this is only a matter of time now).

I look forward to the day when that crossover comes but, for the time being, Cornwell does just like her main protagonist does in Autopsy, peeling back layers of story with her writer’s scalpel (okay, you know, pen or keyboard) until she cuts back to reveal the truth of the fiction. It’s amazing stuff and, as a bonus to me, when I googled a word to find what I thought was a bad typo, I was happy to also learn a new word... so I won’t be looking for a splash in every plash now, that’s for sure. If you like Cornwell’s Scarpetta books, which surely must have a built in audience by now, then you’re sure to love her latest taut, tension filled procedural thriller. I hope she manages to get the next one out for November so my once and future Christmas ritual can kick in again next year.

Spin

The Chase Race

Spin
by Patricia Cornwell
Thomas And Mercer ISBN: 9781542044783

Warning: There will be some major character spoilers in here... so you have been warned.

Spin is the second of Patricia Cornwell’s novels about her new character Captain Calli Chase, who works for a kind of high level, space investigation team linked with NASA. I found myself once more deprived of my regular routine of reading the first chapter of the new Cornwell novel on Christmas morning in 2020, due to the fact that this book was not released into the wild until a little after my birthday in January of this year.

Now, after over half a lifetime of reading her latest books on the exploits of her most famous character, Dr. Kay Scarpetta, I’m always the first to criticise Cornwell about straying from her Scarpetta character... which is why I was pleasantly surprised when I found the first novel in this new series, Quantum (reviewed by me here), to be just as compelling and breakneck as her signature series. 

Nothing could have prepared me for this one though. 

While the first book set up the characters to an extent, it turns out it was only a meet and greet of a novel and the real strengths of this new character are finally caught up with here. This one is a full ‘origin’ story, to coin a term which is more at home in a superhero comic and, frankly, that’s pretty close to what this novel does with Chase. I say this only with affection and admiration when I see that the character is changed and developed in this tome to the point where she wouldn’t have seemed out of place in a 1970s prime-time weekend television show and, frankly, while there are certain similarities with what Cornwell does here and her other writing, this one takes her new creation into another realm, not just in terms of where the reader might have been expecting her to go (no real hints on that from me but the last chapter of this book certainly sees the character already surpassing the potential she was trying to live up to in the first novel) but also in terms of creating a character that really wouldn’t look out of place in a popular comic book and who would certainly, I think, come under the umbrella term of post-human. Or perhaps... superhuman would be a better way to say it.

First things first though and as an answer to those who have read the first in this series... yes, we do finally get acquainted with her twin sister Carme in this book, after having heard of her exploits and possibly compromising activities in Quantum. And she’s not just a twin in terms of who she is but also in terms of the ‘enhancements’ to Calli’s character this time around. I’ll get back to that in a minute.

There are quite a few new characters but also the return of some regular ones like her friend Fran, who gets involved in the investigation while, as a necessity, still being quite in the dark as to what is actually going on. This involves a near fatal miss of an attempt on Calli’s life near the start of the novel and various plot deviations which, once again, involve Cornwell’s characters going through a story which is compressed into a fairly short space of time... no more than about five days in this case but, bearing in mind that Calli has about three days kind of wiped out, almost, from her memory... well, it’s an incredibly short amount of time again. There’s also a new character called Lex and, I’m pretty sure that he’s possibly going to grow up as the novels progress and become the Captain Chase equivalent of Kay Scarpetta’s niece Lucy... but time will tell on that one, I guess.

Okay, I don’t want to spoil the story so let me get onto the main thing which I applaud Cornwell for while also being left, frankly, a little scared due to Cornwell’s reputation for very rigid research which, presumably and as I’ve found in the past, leads to very factual representations of cutting edge technology which already exists (we just don’t necessarily know about it yet).

Basically, Calli is ‘knobbled’, in terms of she’s equipped with what I would best describe as modifications and a whole bunch of nano-technology running around her blood stream (plus contact lenses and glasses) which allow her to talk to the computer inside her head, who is constantly showing her stuff in her vision which is a constant information feed. A supercomputer called ART who can give her any data that’s authorised to her, hack in instantly to camera feeds from anywhere and a whole lot more besides. Not to mention her ‘wand’ features where she can just make various motions with her fingers to open any lock, hack any system and so on. I’m not going to get into all of the things that this new, advanced Calli can do but, suffice to say, she’s basically Iron Man but without the suit or the super strength (and for all I know, the latter might also be coming at some point). Just before I reached the end of this novel, a story hit the news that Artificial Intelligence software was being used to monitor and predict patients with heart problems and there’s not a doubt in my mind that Cornwell is not ‘just’ making things up here. Like my favourite 1930s pulp writer Lester Dent, she knows what’s on the cutting edge and she has a glimpse at what’s coming or, quite probably, is already here. So, yeah, this idea is kind of scary too, to be honest.

And, of course, since these novels are told in the first person by the lead character (just like the majority of the Scarpetta series), we get to learn all about Calli’s new ‘enhanced’ abilities along with her. And it’s smartly handled by Cornwell, as it usually is by a writer of her high calibre. I loved the way Calli is annoyed that ART seems to be forcing ‘functionality introductions’ on her in the same way that a person playing a character in a computer game might be introduced to the various rules and game mechanics at the start of a new level. But, of course, she’s also treating the reader in the same way, as a necessity.

What this also means, in terms of dramatic writing, is that she can monitor what her friends and enemies are doing in her head through various live feeds provided by ART and, therefore, Cornwell manages to break the confines of the first person viewpoint by Chase providing a running commentary on two or more absent characters at different scenes simultaneously. In a third person book you’d just crosscut between characters and that’s a luxury you don’t usually have in a first person narrative. Here, though, Cornwell has managed to find a plot mechanic which she’s built into the character which allows her to do exactly that while still staying with that same person. Mrs. Cornwell is nothing, if not a clever writer, for sure.

And that’s all I’m going to say about Spin other than, it’s another ramped up rush to the end game in this one and it’s amazingly entertaining and almost ‘unputdownable’ if you’ll allow me the luxury of making up words to fit the subject. I can’t wait to read another of these and so now, of course, I’m torn. As I follow her Twitter feed, I’m more than aware that Cornwell is currently working on her next Dr. Scarpetta novel, due out in November so... yay! I’ll be able to get back to my regular Christmas morning ritual this year. However, I also am beginning to love this new character almost as much as Kay and Lucy from those books so, yeah, I wish she could clone herself and write faster so we can have a new Captain Chase novel to read at some point soon too. I’ll leave it at that but, honestly, Spin is just another example of Cornwell doing what she does best... being a really great thriller writer. Still waiting for some movies to come out and, as always, I can’t wait for her next novel.

Quantum

A Range Of Chase

Quantum
by Patricia Cornwell
Thomas & Mercer ISBN: 9781542094061

She’s back... or at least one of my two literary ladies is?

My celebratory tone is because, for the first time in three years, I can resume my regular Christmas ritual... or part of it, at least. The part where I get given Patricia Cornwell’s latest Scarpetta book for Christmas and devour it within the next couple of days. This is often finished up with a second part to my Christmas ritual with another author’s book who, inexplicably, seemed to give up writing these things exactly the same year Cornwell did. Alas, her book isn’t due still until next year but then, so is the follow up to this one by Cornwell so, I’m just really happy to be reading the new Cornwell novel in my Christmas holidays once more... even though this one is not, nor probably will be for the forseeable future (if ever again), a Scarpetta mystery.

Instead, Quantum is the first entry in a series of books about a new character, Captain Calli Chase, who works for security (kind of, among other things) for NASA and who is possibly in the running for going up into space herself in a future adventure. Those who follow Cornwell on Twitter will know the amount of research that the author has done within NASA for this book and, even if you don’t lurk within her social media, you will surely know how detailed her books are so that the research that’s gone into this work is self evident.

Still, nervous as I was about going into a non-Scarpetta book by this writer... it’s not the first time she’s ventured into other characters and I don’t recall finishing off either of her other non-Scarpetta series... I’d have to say that her writing is as strong as its ever been here and, even if you’re missing Scarpetta, her voice is certainly in here because Cornwell’s writing style with her new character is pretty damn near to her former literary avatar.

I’ve said that detecting the same speech patterns etc within different characters in a book is a huge turn off in terms of buying into the world that a writer has created but, here, I think Cornwell gets away with it extremely well. We can hear Cornwell’s confidence and way of expressing things in her new main character, for sure. Especially since the books are written like the majority (not quite all) of the Scarpetta novels... in first person. However, there are some quirks to this character and her identical twin sister which also make this a vastly different read, in some ways, to her regular character’s work.

Also, like quite a few of her later novels in the Scarpetta series, time is compressed into quite a small period, taking place within the space of just over 24 hours in early December 2019. The plot is of an important upcoming installation of a top secret Quantum device in space, although the title also, I believe, refers metaphorically to the entanglements of personalities and shared traits of identical twins. However, deadly coincidences pointing to the sabotage of NASA’s plans are landing quite forcefully in Chase’s lap and everything she hears as her day gets worse, keeps landing back home with the possibility of her twin sister being more than just a little heavily implicated in the trail of corpses and security threats leading back to the base.

Die hard fans of Scarpetta needn’t worry too much about straying into radically different territory here. A large section of the book deals with working a murder scene, just as it probably would in one of Cornwell’s other novels and you certainly don’t get the impression she’s writing about anything she doesn’t know... it’s all very detailed. Also, that headlong dash towards the ending you often get with her work these days is clearly present, as things escalate very quickly within the last forty or so pages of the book, as NASA are counting down to the important installation in outer space.

So, yeah, a typical Cornwell style which, in my book, makes her probably one of the foremost writers of what I, not disparagingly, would call the modern pulp novel. She’s in good company and probably the absolute master... mistress?... of 21st Century mystery fiction and this first Chase story certainly demonstrates why she should be considered so.

I did have one huge problem within the first three pages, to be honest, when Captain Chase assumes the name of a connecting, underground tunnel beneath NASA, which is called Yellow Submarine, must have been so named so sometime after 1968, when the song came out. Frankly, I’m surprised both the character and Cornwell don’t realise the song dates from 1966 (when it was featured in the Revolver album... my personal favourite album by The Beatles) and so, yeah, the timeline established there is out slightly.... not that it matters or has any bearing on the rest of the novel. Actually, with things like this and the introduction of a ‘drive’ being named after Penny Lane, there is one way where this novel differs hugely from the Scarpetta series and that is with the abundance of modern pop culture references scattered throughout and peppered into Chase’s dialogue with the reader. We have little nods to Avengers - Infinity War, Mr. Spock and one of the characters has a Spider-Man ring tone on her phone. Heck, she even includes a paragraph on the murder of the immensely talented young actress and director Adrienne Shelly at one point... which made me both happy and sad at the same time, to be honest.

Now this is a first book for the characters so, yeah, the reader doesn’t have the usual pleasure of greeting previous regular characters in the series and smiling at their antics and, of course, worrying if they’re all going to make it through the pages alive at the end. So that’s something this book doesn’t have but... it does start to set up new characters for the future so, obviously, those pleasures are best waited for as the series gets written.

There is one character, for instance, who is only mentioned and never really glimpsed in the flesh... and mentioned a lot, believe me... so I can’t wait to meet this person in a later novel. And, frankly, since its all set in the same world of... well... what I call the ‘shady world of high level law enforcement and security’... then it’s almost certain, I think, that Scarpetta and, quite probably, her niece Lucy, will cross paths with Captain Chase at some point in the near future, once the series has been established.

So yeah, finally a non-Scarpetta novel by Patricia Cornwell that I really liked and, while I suspect the content and the writing style are deliberately cushioning the readers to the way these books might progress, I think it’s all pretty great and frankly, when a writer includes such poetic prose as “the half page filled with her handwriting, tiny and flattened as if the words are too shy to raise their hands in class”, then you know you are in the hands of an absolute artist. Which of course, Patricia Cornwell is. So, yeah, Quantum gets a huge recommendation from me and, if you’re worried a new character may be a little too jarring after sticking with the Scarpetta character for so many decades... I’d say you don’t need to worry about that. This is an almost typical Cornwell book and, therefore, does what all you Scarpetta junkies need it to do. So get on it.

Chaos

Auntie Kay-os

Chaos
by Patricia Cornwell
Harper Collins 2016
ISBN: 978-0-00-815062-7

And here we go again with the first of my two regular Christmas literary rituals coming into play. Namely, the new Kay Scarpetta book by the amazing Patricia Cornwell. I suspect this one will be a fairly short review because there’s only so much you can say about a novel that’s so well written and perfect, easily confirming Cornwell as the top writer in her field... but I’ll have a go.

Unlike a lot of the Scarpetta books, Chaos starts off with an extraordinarily long lead in before the first dead body of the story actually arrives. This is, of course, to set up characters and to place them in the path of Cornwell’s two lead characters, Scarpetta and her FBI husband Benton Wesley, before pulling all the threads of her plot together. It also allows herself to set up the occasional red herring which is fine with me because, in all fairness, it actually worked with me this time and when a character does something with a bottle of water in the early stages of the book, I fell victim quite convincingly to her sleight of hand and was distracted in totally the wrong direction. I’m always really pleased when Cornwell (or anyone, these days) is able to surprise me when it comes to not telegraphing the ending of the story from early on.

And, of course, it goes almost without saying that Cornwell is so good at portraying her varied characters, such as Marino, her niece Lucy and Lucy’s lover Janet (who’s not in it very much), that although the lead in to the action is a fairly long one this time... I didn’t mind it a bit. She takes her time to explain things to the reader, embellishing the background in which her characters work with layers of reality so that, I really don’t feel slowed down at all. This is all great stuff and in the hands of a master writer like her, it just all works really well.

Another reason why this approach in no way messes with her writing style, which is in the first person from Scarpetta’s point of view (as the majority of them have been) is that this one is a good example of a story where Cornwell manages to do some interesting things with the passage of time. The whole story is set over the course of about a day, tops, with just a chapter or so at the end set a couple of days later and this way of structuring the story seems to be something the writer has been doing a lot of over the past few years. It’s also something she seems to excel at more than most who try the same tactic and she still seems to be able to both compress and expand time on a whim... which is really helpful in the somewhat manipulative art of fiction writing, for sure. Most of the book is set at the crime scene of the first body or the surrounding area and various characters make appearances at regular intervals to inform Scarpetta of certain plot developments as she works a crime scene and races against time to get the body properly attended to before she can have it transported to her autopsy rooms.

As the story unfolds, we are made privy to various cutting edge ideas and theories that someone in the author’s position has access to know about and it can sometimes be a quite sobering experience to read about terrifying inventions which could threaten the life of everyone if somebody got it into their head to build and use this stuff in a certain way because, well, you just know that if someone with Cornwell’s connections is writing about this stuff, then it’s probably a distinct possibility that it could happen (if it hasn’t already).

Regular fans of the series will be happy to know that certain long running antagonists and ghosts pop up from the past in this one, just as they have been for a couple of novels now, and that the way in which they pop up is sometimes surprising. The very last chapter, for example, when everything is supposedly said and done, reveals some surprising information about a fairly recently acquired character that I totally didn’t see coming and only had a hint of a couple of chapters before. So there’s some good stuff here and one has to wonder just how much forward planning the usually meticulous Cornwell is doing with her characters because 15 years or so from now, I reckon she’s left herself another thread she can pull on if she wants to.

And I’m really not going to say anymore about Chaos for fear of spoilers. I said it would be one of my shorter reviews and it certainly is. There’s not much else to say. Once again, Patricia Cornwell demonstrates why she is the queen of modern crime fiction, turning out a book that is taut, slow but evenly and suspensefully paced and... as I kind of expect from her these days... nothing short of a minor masterpiece. If you’re already a fan of Cornwell and have read the series from the get go, this is another ‘must read’ as far as I’m concerned. I wouldn’t say it’s a jumping on point for new readers but, if you are a new reader, go back to her early works and start from there because, frankly, her character progression is amazing. What more can one say? Well done again to a truly great writer... don’t miss out on the Scarpetta books. They are essential reading.

Depraved Heart

‘til Death Do Us Heart

Depraved Heart
by Patricia Cornwell
Harper Collins 2015
ISBN: 978-0-00-755246-7

Okay then... another Christmas day, another of Patricia Cornwell’s Kay Scarpetta thrillers, Depraved Heart. Except... not quite. Long term readers will be familiar with my annual tradition of starting the new Cornwell book on Christmas day but this year, due to unforseen circumstances, I actually had to start reading this four days later than usual... so this is actually the second book that I read after Christmas day.

It’s been a while since I was actually critical of Cornwell. I’ve always loved her work but remember a few years, just before I started up this blog, in fact, where I had trouble with her writing on a few of her books. I don’t know what or why the problem occurred, and it’s possibly just my perception of them at the time, maybe. However, for a while now, Cornwell and her central protagonist, Dr. Kay Scarpetta, have been back in top, crisp form and this new novel is no exception. It’s a real humdinger of a page turner for sure and I was completely captured right from the get go. That being said... I have one general criticism of this particular tome but... I think I’ll address that at the end of this review.

Depraved Heart is exceptional storytelling. Following on from the previous novel, Flesh And Blood, Cornwell takes the unusual tactic of setting the next book fairly close in terms of time to the events of that last novel. Quite often the characters will have moved on for a year or more but it does kind of make a certain sense, if you remember the events of the last one, that we should be plunged back into the circumstances of that story and, although this is set only two months since the last chapter of Flesh And Blood, I was personally hoping that it would be set within five minutes of that last chapter.

Instead, we are plunged immediately into what seems to be a new investigation, with Kay Scarpetta once more telling the story in first person present tense as the events of the day in which all but the last chapter takes place, once again unfold. As things happen, so we are filled in about events that occurred after the end of the previous story but, straight away, Cornwell begins to keep us on the edge of our seats as, right from the outset, a new element is introduced which immediately rings alarm bells and which also takes the action back to the 1990s, returning to the events surrounding things which were happening in the Scarpetta stories written at that time. Once again, the book involves one of Scarpetta’s old enemies, still presumed dead by the FBI due to some stuff I’m not going to spoil for you here and, right away, you will be feeling the danger lurking in the pages. Of course, now Cornwell is back to writing the books in the present tense, the suspense is palpable because anything, literally anything, could happen and with Cornwell’s early track record for killing off characters... it basically means you will be fearing for all your favourite supporting cast right from the first chapter.

Cornwell also does a thing which she’s been doing for a while now and that is to compress short bursts of time into very long sequences and expanding them out... almost like she’s viewing the events in slow motion. For example, a very disturbing cell phone video which Scarpetta watches while also trying to do her job, goes on for several chapters and almost 50 pages... even though the running time of the video is only about 20 mins. Not that it’s in any way dull because, as little bits of alarming information are spoon fed to the reader about the contents of the video, we are also worried about Scarpetta as she simultaneously tries to work a crime scene without putting herself in any legally questionable situations and, obviously, in any situation which means that death may be visited on her or any of her friends and colleagues at any point in the narrative. And Cornwell, being probably the worlds number one living writer of crime fiction, in my humble opinion, milks the content for all it’s worth and ratchets up the suspense paragraph by paragraph, word by word.

Fans of Benton, Marino, Lucy Farinelli (always my favourite), Lucy’s girlfriend Janet and various other periphery characters will be constantly fearful for both the lives and possible incarceration of some of them by a compromised and possibly criminal investigation undertaken by the FBI. And, of course, the anxiety surrounding the main manipulator of the piece, arch enemy Carrie Grethen, and the fall out from not just the last book but, possibly, a great many years of the various characters’ fictional careers. Which means fans of Cornwell's work will be lapping it up, just like me, and whizzing through the words to the end of the book as fast as possible. It’s hugely entertaining and, as the twists and turns get morbidly darker, you wonder just how the ending could possibly bring any shades of light with it...

Well, it’s an ending I’m certainly not going to spoil for anyone here but I will reveal my one criticism of the book and it’s this. In the last one, Cornwell did a very unusual thing for her. She ended the novel on a one word cliff hanger, a four letter case of onomatopoeia which immediately raises a big question of what lethal thing has just happened. Did somebody close to Scarpetta, even Scarpetta herself, just die? Well, she neatly sidesteps and distracts the reader all the way through this one by using the flashback structure in a way that you get so involved in the current story that, pretty soon, you forget the cliffhanger ending of the last one. However, unless I completely misinterpreted the ending of Flesh And Blood or missed something obvious in Depraved Heart, she never once addresses just what the heck happened at the end of that last book. So I’m kind of at a loss to try and figure out what occurred at that point in the narrative, to be honest. And it seems I'm not the only reader who has had this problem with this novel.

That aside, though, Depraved Heart is an absolutely fantastic thriller in the writer’s inimitable style and, you never know, we might well get the answer to that last cliff hanger coming to light in a future novel in the series. If that happens, I’m personally hoping it will be the next one but, who knows.... we shall have to wait and see. All I know is that I can’t wait for next Christmas to see what Scarpetta and the gang are up to next. Definitely a must read for fans of the character but, be warned, don’t read this one out of sequence before any of the previous novels.

Dust

Awe Topsy

Dust
by Patricia Cornwell
Little Brown ISBN: 978-1847445322

And so, as I have been doing every year for the past 20 plus years of my life, I come to the first of my annual Christmas rituals. Sometime early on in the Christmas holiday, preferably on the 25th December, the same day I unwrap this annual present from my parents, I crack open Patricia Cornwell’s latest Scarpetta novel and find out how some of my favourite characters are doing...

Marino, Benton, Lucy Farinelli (my absolute favourite) and of course, Dr. Scarpetta herself.

And they’re all here present and correct and, I’m happy to say, in fairly equal measure in this one - sometimes the odd character doesn’t turn up so much due to how appropriate they are to the story but this one has them all.

Now I had a bad patch with some of Cornwell’s Scarpetta novels a little while back. I didn’t mind that she switched from 1st person to 3rd person narrative so much (although that left me fearful for Scarpetta’s life... it’s harder to kill your main character off when you’re seeing it through that person’s eyes) as the fact that some of the books seemed just, I dunno, less well written than the ones I used to read of old. If you’ve been reading my annual reviews of her books this last three or four years, you’ll also know that she’s won me back over time... her latest batch of novels have been absolutely as good as anything she’s written before and Dust is no exception to this rule.

This one continues with her return to first person narrative and, what that does, is keep you on your guard and on edge in a different way. You know pretty much from the early chapters of the novel that there is a killer afoot and that Scarpetta thinks she is being watched. I’m not going to give anything away but, since you know her unseen adversary is in the background, when characters such as the aforementioned regulars in the series leave the view of “Scarpetta’s eyes” in the story to check things out in a different location... you are instantly worried that Cornwell’s going to kill a regular off while Scarpetta is still just getting started at the main crime scenes.

Like a fair few of her later works, in terms of the scale of the story, Dust is a chamber concerto rather than a full blown orchestral symphony of crime... which I know she is also more than capable of from her earlier books. However, this doesn’t make the details and the suspense of the story any less compelling. In fact, like a lot of artistic disciplines, concentrating on a limited palette in terms of time and location, as this one does (the majority of the book takes place in around a 24 hour period), the focus on the heart of the main attraction is made all the more intense and potent from it. As any reader of Cornwell’s creations will probably concur, with Scarpetta it’s all in the details and the details are made all the more interesting by the political and criminal machinations which touch on the Scarpetta family at a close personal level... I really don’t want to say too much and spoil it here so, please forgive me if I seem a little cryptic in my description.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that the plot is, as usual for this writer and her characters, fraught with peril but the slowed down time frame means you can spend time with the characters and share their feelings and personal agendas in a way that you might not have the luxury to do in a globe-trotting caper. The characters are such rich characters to work with anyway, that I felt relieved that Cornwell was able to pass the time with them... as observed by her eagle eyed Dr. Kay Scarpetta incarnation. Although, I would love to see a Lucy Farinelli series of books at some point, truth be told.

As the story slowly progresses and you slowly begin to realise the political ramifications and potential threat to characters who are dear to your heart, the more you will speed through the novel at a rate of knotts. It’s another page turner from Cornwell who does her best to keep you leafing through those pages in the most entertaining and enlightening manner possible as you rush towards the final solution. A solution, in this case, which is more about villains than murderers, in many ways, but I won’t explain that one either... you’ll just have to read it.

There was one strange chapter or flashback early on in the novel to a conversation between Scarpetta and Marino, many years in the past, which puzzled me a little and it felt a bit like using a sledge hammer to crack a walnut when it came to the emotional point she was making... but then again I’ve no idea if she’s building up to something for a future novel so lets see how that goes. She does that sometimes, I’ve noticed, although the little interview material and the tweets I’ve seen her make suggest that these seemingly engineered moments may, in fact, be a subconscious manifestation in terms of the way she seems to picture her style of writing. It doesn’t matter though... I’m sure it will either manifest itself or not and I look forward to her work, as always, as one of the most fulfilling annual rituals I indulge in.

If you’ve never read a Scarpetta novel before, then Dust actually isn’t a bad jumping on point as she makes the relationships between the various characters quite clear throughout the novel for first time readers... although personally, since the characters don’t stay the same and do progress and grow throughout the series, I would still point you back to her earlier novels and recommend you read them in order if you want to get “the full Scarpetta” effect. Either way, I’d recommend you get yourself to a point at Christmas where you can get a healthy dose of “me time”, prepare some cheese and crackers, pour yourself a glass of port or sherry, and crack open a Scarpetta novel. Always a good piece of advice, I reckon.

Bones Are Forever

The Bone Ranger

Bones Are Forever
by Kathy Reichs
William Heinemann 
ISBN: 13: 978-0434021130

And here we go again.

Another year, another of Kathy Reichs much loved Temperence Brennan novels.

I explained, in my review of Patricia Cornwell’s The Bone Bed, right here, the trappings of my Christmas ritualistic relationship with that author’s work. Well for most years, this ritual is indulged twice at Christmas, once with the new Cornwell book and then followed up with the latest helping of Reichs. So this year was no different from most years.

I mentioned in my review of the previous Brennan novel that, although I thought people had judged that one fairly harshly, I was not in agreement that it was particularly badly written (I think, one could never level that kind of complete towards the lovely and very talented Kathy Reichs), but it is getting to the point where, perhaps, the writing is a bit more formulaic than is helpful and that last one, Flash And Bones (reviewed here), was easily my least favourite.

Due, perhaps, to its changing locations and sense of a bigger canvass than the last one, Bones Are Forever is a much more entertaining novel than the last... though nowhere near my favourite of these particular books. Kathy’s dialogue, as usual, just sings off the page... it’s an effortless and customarily humorous outlook on a life filled with bleakness and it’s to Reichs’ credit that she can have us jumping into Brennan’s head as she discovers the remains of various dead babies and the bleakness that brings with it, while still having us laughing out loud at Tempe’s quirky outlook on life and the way she interacts with her colleagues, peers and various ex-lovers.

The characters are quickly drawn but are, perhaps, a tad too sketchy for my liking although, to be fair, we’ve been living with some of these characters for quite a long time so we are already bringing a lot of their personal histories with us to the novel. If the plot seems a little too sketchy and thin in places, the strength of the short, punchy, dialogue keeps us on a one to one basis with the inhabitants of the book to the point where it almost gets to feeling you are tagging along with a family member.

For all the good things, though, it does suffer in comparison with the last couple of Scarpetta novels which, generally, feel  like they’ve got a little more weight behind them. The breeziness of the character’s main narrative could, perhaps, be toned down a little on certain occasions, to give the events of the novel a more luxurious pacing and give a sharper edge to some of the more serious issues residing in the book.

Reichs, once again, makes use of the old pulp writing trick of ending every chapter with a miniature cliffhanger (usually involving the discovery of a new slant on the evidence or something similar) which won’t be explained until the next chapter... I’m not knocking it, it works for me, although I will say that sometimes I would welcome a break from that kind of routine... just once in a while. But I’m not complaining here, there aren’t that many writers who could pull off Reichs’ structural tricks with the same dexterity which she employs here. She’s got a definite gift for this style of writing.

Ultimately, Bones Are Forever, which seems to have a bit of a clunky title until you realise, later on in the book, that the bizarre Ian Fleming reference is actually pertinent to part of the plot, is another satisfying read from one of the absolute greats of modern crime fiction. Not in my top ten of her books but certainly a more filling word-snack than last years fun but less tasty Flash And Bones. Easily a recommended read for the loyal fans of both this writer and the more substantial, quite different, book incarnation of her Temperence Brennan character. I look forward to indulging myself in the annual ritual, once again, come December 2013.

The Bone Bed

No Bone Unturned

The Bone Bed

by Patricia Cornwell

Little Brown ISBN: 9781408703441

It may be that I’m getting old, but I tend to cherish the few times in life when I have the luxury to indulge myself, without interruption, in the little rituals I have come to acquire over the years. Old or, you know, maybe I’m more like a dog than a human. Dogs need rituals... they’re important to them and to stray from those little patterns they have lodged in their brains is something which causes them confusion and suspicion.

And so, it’s that “once a year” time again where I, too, get to follow my little ritual. 

There are a few little ingredients needed for this ritual. Number one is a comfy chair away from TV or Internet noise. A bed is acceptable, but a comfy chair is preferable so one may keep one’s back near to vertical. Then some small snack might be on hand. Cheese, crackers and a glass or two of port is a good combination. A cup of tea is acceptable as a stand in for the port if required. Then comes the last and most important part of my ritual, which is reliant on my mother and father remembering the unspoken rule of “the Christmas present”. Because, every year, I unwrap one of my Christmas gifts and it’s the new Dr. Kay Scarpetta mystery from Patricia Cornwell, which I then, when able, throw into the mix with the port and cheese and comfy chair as soon as I possibly can.

It’s my Christmas ritual you see... and I’m happy to say that, thanks to the kindness of my parents, it’s one I’ve been able to indulge in once again this year... as I have for over a third of my life.

The Bone Bed is, as you may expect from Cornwell of late, another great page turner which will pull you inside the covers with her main protagonists and antagonists and not let you go until she’s had the good Doctor make you alarmed to ever even think about committing any kind of crime (or misdemeanour even) in this day and age of science and criminology. She’s a great writer and, once again, she proves so here.

The story of The Bone Bed is not one I’m going ot spoil for you here, suffice it to say that the set up may surprise you since it doesn’t immediately sink in why the book starts out like this, until you’re a good way through the novel. A sea turtle, dinosaur bones, they’ll keep warm in the back of your head as the case Scarpetta is working on is ready for you to take them back out of storage again... pulled open and revealed in that big meat locker inside your head.

Cornwell has been on Twitter for a while now, think I’ve been following her for just over a year, and I remember wondering, when I discovered her on there via some of my followers, if she wasn’t using the idea of Twitter to research the way interactions take place to use it as an element to one of her future novels. Well, it’s certainly got no small part to play in some of the initial plot details in this one but, again, you’ll have to read it to find out. What I will say, though, is that, as usual, Cornwell sometimes makes me feel a little bit of an idiot when it comes to surrounding myself with caution in everyday life. I’m sure Cornwell treads a different and much more interesting but also much more intensively disturbing path through life than her average reader, so some of her judgement calls and attitudes to certain areas of modern living are maybe a tad more harsh and critical than they may seem to her audience. What that means, when I came to read this particular one of her novels, is this... I’m just a tiny bit more paranoid about some of the followers I talk to on Twitter than I used to be. Not sure if that’s a good thing or not but, once again, Cornwell reminds me of my naïvety.

Like her last couple of novels, the action is returned to the first person style narrative which marked all her great early books, and I still prefer this style of writing, being allowed the privilege of being inside Scarpetta’s head when she starts making deductions. Also, like her last couple of novels, the action takes place within a very short time frame. A day or two covers the whole thing and, although she doesn’t use as dramatic chapter endings as some of her contemporaries do to make you rush headlong into the next chapter, it’s true to say that she brings the characters alive to such an extent that you’ll certainly be shooing away or cursing unwelcome interruptions as you rush through the book in as few gulps as you can manage. Great stuff.

My one complaint may be that, again, there’s not enough of the Lucy Farinelli character in it for my taste. Would still like to see a lot more of her like the “old days” but at least she’s in it to a certain extent and plays an important role in the proceedings. I was also glad to see another character back from Lucy’s distant past who I’d completely forgotten about but who I am really glad has been reintroduced in to the novels... albeit briefly this time around.

And that’s all I’ve got to say this time, I think. 

I’ll just conclude by saying what I always end up saying about the latest of Cornwell’s Scarpetta novels. If you like Cornwell and are a fan of her characters (and why wouldn’t you be?) then you can rest assured that The Bone Bed is once more a solid and welcome read from this writer. If you’ve never read one of her books though... well, the characters grow and drop in and out of the books in a very organic and progressive way, so if you are going to make a start on Cornwell then I’d advise you to go right back to the start and read the books in chronological order. It’s worth it just to see Lucy growing up.

Another satisfying read by the Queen of Modern Crime fiction and something Cornwell fans won’t want to miss.

Flash & Bones

Even Temperanced


Flash And Bones by Kathy Reichs
Random House. ISBN: 9780434015344

Flash And Bones is the 14th novel in Kathy Reichs extremely popular Temperance Brennan (forensic anthropologist) series. Now, I’ve seen a lot of negative reviews on this one with people saying the quality of the writing is going downhill fast of late but I don’t think that’s necessarily the problem here.

Certainly, everyone can go through a bad patch and I remember the other writer I read of these... well, I refer to them by what they are, modern detective pulp fiction... Patricia Cornwell, went through a very bad patch, in my opinion, some years ago where she had quite a few books out that seemed, somehow, much less on-the-ball than I expected from her. And now she’s out of that slump and her Scarpetta novels are as sharp as they ever were, once more. Perhaps that’s what’s happening with Reichs here or... well perhaps not. I’m not swayed so easily by popular opinion.

I sailed through this one, like I always do with Reichs’ novels and I’d have to say that while I didn’t enjoy the conclusion of this novel quite as much as I would have hoped for, it still holds up as an exciting read. Just a touch different than usual because almost all of her regular characters are mostly absent from the book. Her complicated romantic life as personified by Andrew Ryan is mostly left out here and the character only has one phone call in this novel as far as I can remember. Her ex-husband features more but only in the context of Temperance being constantly badgered and irritated by his new fiancee to help with the wedding plans. I can’t remember having met her before so I reckon she’s technically a new character.

The plot seems fairly simplistic, though, and there doesn’t seem to be much to be done to get the case solved. I’m guessing this one was a really difficult novel for Reichs to write, actually, because it’s hard to make something with a run-of-the-mill plot seem so exciting and vibrant but, even without her regular cast of characters (except Tempe’s beloved cat), it’s a tribute to her writing skills that she had me turning the pages to read more.

One of the tricks she uses, which is something a lot of people are doing more of again these days I’ve noticed (including her nearest rival, the aforementioned Cornwell), is to end every chapter on a new cliffhanger... be that a statement that foreshadows things to come or with the revelation of a new piece of information that doesn’t make sense or... well, anything which will make damn sure you want to start that next chapter straight away to find out what’s going on.

This is where my analogy of these kinds of great modern writers being the modern pulp writers of their day comes into its own... and I’ll stress again as I have done before now... I think pulp writers over the years are great literary artists and I don’t use the nomenclature that grew up around being printed on cheap paper stocks in a derogatory manner when it comes to my assessment of their genius and vitality.

Getting back to the chapter endings, this is exactly what a lot of the old pulp writers would do and wriers like Lester Dent (who wrote the bulk of the 180 plus Doc Savage novels under the publisher’s house name Kenneth Robeson) would rigidly adhere to this kind of cliffhanger approach throughout their entire career... albeit in a slightly more extreme example, more often than not. A random sampling of the last lines of, lets say eight, chapters of Flash & Bones will give you a greater understanding of what I’m talking about...

“But that was changing fast.”

“The look on his face told me something was wrong.”

“The goddamn FBI torched our John Doe!”

“When I straightened, the cold steel of a muzzle kissed my left temple.”

“I was about to take a quadruple volley.”

“And couldn’t believe who was walking toward me.”

“And felt the tiny hairs on my neck go upright.”

“The chill spread through my body.”

And so on. Not all of them placing our heroine in mortal peril of her life, to be sure but, given the context of what preceded them, enough to have you reaching for the next chapter in a mad rush. So I’m glad some time honoured traditions are being upheld in modern fiction.

The backdrop to this particular murder investigation is a NASCAR track and the whole story is set around the world of motor racing, something I confess to knowing nothing about. Tempe solves this one by partnering up with two different men, one cop and one ex-cop, at various points in the story and although the prose is as sparkling as ever, I did miss Andy Ryan’s presence a lot more than I thought I would during the course of the novel. I’m wondering though, after fourteen novels in this series, if she’s just had enough of writing about the same people all the time and doesn’t have anything else remotely interesting to say about them. That’d be my guess anyway.

Another added dimension to this is that you have the FBI actually seeming to be working against Brennan and her boss... although you kinda know that it’s all going to turn out okay in the end. But she milks it deftly and you do wonder at some point if the FBI are not just trying to hide murders they’ve committed themselves. Which I think would have made for an interesting conclusion but... who am I to say.

At the end of the day, Flash And Bones, is certainly not one of the best of the Tempe Brennan novels... in fact I’d say it’s easily my least favourite in the series so far. Still, having said that, I don’t agree with a lot of the naysayers on reviews that this is a badly written book. Maybe the intricacies of the plot are a little stale and obvious but I think that the novel in general is written with a great amount of polish and will have you turning the pages at a lightning pace, as per usual with this writer. If you’re a big fan of Reichs the writer (as opposed to Reichs the TV writer where the Temperance Brennan of Bones is but a pale shadow in every way of the “real” Tempe Brennan in the novels) then you’ll certainly not want to miss out on another solid page turner. If you’ve never experienced her brilliant characters before, though, you’d do a lot better starting off with the first novel in the series and working up from there.

Red Mist

Not To Be Mist

Red Mist 2011. By Patricia Cornwell. Little Brown Jug. ISBN: 9781408702321

Ok... and so it’s the Christmas season once again and in my home that means one very important ritual once all the present opening and well wishing is done. Like every year for the best part of a decade and a half, my first book I read after every Christmas is the brand new Scarpetta novel by the Queen of Crime Fiction (at least that’s how I think of her), Patricia Cornwell.

This is another startlingly intense read and, once again, Ms Cornwell proves to us that she has created one of the most addictive pulp fiction characters of recent years... and I don’t mean to be disrespectful or to do the lady in question a disservice by that comment. I have absolutely the highest respect for pulp fiction and think it’s the most important kind of literature there is in the last couple of centuries. Kay Scarpetta follows in a long line of characters who is practically infallible (although Cornwell possibly wouldn’t want me saying that) and almost invincible in the face of evil. These characters are our heroes who we hold a light up to and say, yeah, these are the people we aspire to be like... fictional or not. As far as I’m concerned, Scarpetta joined the ranks of Sherlock Holmes, C. Auguste Dupin, Nero Wolfe, John Carter of Mars, The Shadow, Doc Savage and their ilk long ago and she is the shining hero of our generation. I count myself lucky to be alive as and when these stories are being written.

Red Mist is another corker of a story and, like Port Mortuary (reviewed here), it shares a somewhat shorter timeline than many of the Scarpetta novels I remember. Although not compressed into pretty much a 24 hour period like the former novel, the action does take place in only a few days on this one and, like Cornwell often does with her crackling and unbelievably well written prose, it seems to speed up and gather intensity like a snowball being rolled down a hill as it hurtles at pretty much breakneck pace towards the end of the novel.

This one’s very much focussed on Scarpetta as opposed to her supporting regulars but the usual cast are certainly all present and correct and there for her when they’re needed, with the addition of a semi-regular character who’s been absent from the novels for a while. My only real problem with this was that Lucy Farinelli, who I’ve been reading about since she was a little girl come to stay with “Auntie Kay”, was not in it as much as I would have liked (or expected given the characters this novel deals with... don’t want to give away too many spoilers here). Never mind... she can’t be the main show all the time and I’m always greatful that she turns up at all after her miraculous “cancer cure by gunshot wound to the head” from a number of years ago.

The novel picks up from the threads left over from the previous novel but, to be fair, I think you could jump right on into this one without having read Port Mortuary at all. So you could definitely use this one as a starting point if you so desired... although why you’d want to and not read the 18 other excellent Scarpetta novels that preceded this one I don’t know. Just start at the beginning if you’ve not already read her... this writer is phenomenally entertaining and informative... I don’t really understand all the “real life” science facts she peppers her books with but I’ve read enough of these to be scared of ever committing any kind of crime... it’s too easy to get caught (not that I’ve ever really been tempted to commit any crime to be honest... I like to humour myself that I have more sense than that).

Ok... short review again (hmm... a lot of the shorter reviews lately) but only because, frankly, the book is so perfect that it’s hard to be able to find much to criticise in it. This is first class reading and I’m pleased to recommend it to anybody who likes to read about unusual murders and their solutions... as always with Scarpetta, the mystery lies not with what was done but with how it was possibly accomplished or what unusual feature is drawing it to everybody’s attention. Another in a series of first rate crime novels by Patricia Cornwell and definitely worth your time. If anyone is still writing “page turners” in this century it’s Cornwell. In all good bookshops now.

A Corpse In Every Port

Port Mortuary 2010.

By Patricia Cornwell.

Little Brown Jug.

ISBN: 9781408702352

I got a little bit worried about Patricia Cornwell for a while. Every year for the last fifteen years or so I have had a Christmas ritual of getting given the latest novels by Patricia Cornwell and Kathy Reichs and reading them over my Christmas holiday one after another. I usually whizz through them quite quickly but this year I’m a little behind on my reading because the Christmas season seems to have been a little more “packed” for me than usual.

Cornwell’s Scarpetta books have mostly been brilliant since she started writing them but I remember a period of a good few years which ended, maybe three or four years ago, when I noticed she’d kind of lost her edge with the characters and... to my amateur thinking... got very sloppy with her writing. Honestly, there were a couple of books in another series she was writing as well as in her long running Scarpetta series where I thought she’d really lost it. Things seemed to be unexplained and then the audience were referred back to them even though we hadn’t known anything about them. And in general... it just seemed like she was preoccupied with other things in her life and I was, frankly, shocked that the publishers let one or two of them out in the state they were in.

That’s an awful criticism to level at anyone and I don’t do it lightly. It didn’t coincide with her shift from telling the Scarpetta stories in first person narrative style to third person... it was a year or two after this. And I kept telling myself... oh, look. Even Ian Fleming had a couple of rubbish ones in his Bond series. The Man With The Golden Gun anybody?

I’m glad to say, though, that the books soon picked up quality again and the last few years have been really tight, gripping reads from the woman who is basically the Queen of the modern day crime writers (Kathy Reichs definitely runs her a close second though). I’m quite sure in years to come, Cornwell’s investigative forensic scientist (or whatever the current nomenclature is... don’t shout at me, I’m not very technically minded) Dr. Kay Scarpetta will be as well known as some of the other great literary “detectives” of our time. Certainly she wouldn’t look out of place in the company of Sherlock Holmes, Joseph Rouletabille, Miss Marple, Hercule Poirot or Philip Marlow.

Her books and characters are quite intensely focussed and written with a razor-like sharpness which rivals the quick efficiency of one of Dr. Scarpetta’s scalpels as she slices into a dead body to look for clues. It’s the kind of writing that hooks you in and won’t let you rest until you get to the, often quite unexpected, solution at the books end.

Port Mortuary is no exception to her brilliant Scarpetta adventures and matches the intensity of her previous work and, if anything, kicks it up another notch or two. It’s also a return to a slightly different style of writing the characters in that, for the first time in years, the inimitable Cornwell has returned to writing the story in first person from Scarpetta’s own viewpoint. Now this is interesting and I guess there are pros and cons to working the characters in this way.

Cornwells books have always been a bit edgy in that the mortality of the regular characters, especially in the early days, has always been up for grabs. You never knew who was going to wind up dead next and about the only character you could be sure was probably not going to die was that of the fictional author, Dr. Scarpetta herself. All that changed, though, when Cornwell switched to writing them in third person and my natural assumption was that Cornwell had maybe finally got fed up with the character she had created and decided to switch to a writing viewpoint with which she could kill the character off unexpectedly if need be. And so the books, for the most part, became an even more intense read because you were always fearful, as you were reading through these things, that this could be the last book in the series and that Scarpetta could pop her clogs any minute.

Switching the books back to her old “first person” perspective allows for greater mystery (you don’t know what any peripheral good or evil characters are thinking because you are no longer in their heads) and allows for more surprise in the actions of other characters but at the same time gives you the message that Scarpetta is narrating all this... so it’s not likely she’s going to die anytime soon.

Port Mortuary is quite a focussed bit of writing in that for nearly all of the near 500 pages, all the action of the novel takes place pretty much over a 24 hour period (although obviously events pertaining to the current investigation are filled in by the relevant characters keeping Scarpetta up to speed). It also tells the story of a cover-up operation which Scarpetta colluded with in the early days of her career and which has been haunting her since. I’m not going to tell you what that is though... spoilers!

There was a lot less of my favourite Cornwell character Lucy Farinelli in it than I would have liked but she’s certainly represented in the plot as it also includes references to increasingly alarming nano-technology... and in her forward at the start of the novel, Cornwell is quick to point out that she is not writing science fiction here but science fact. So... something new for me to worry about again. I do wish Cornwell would write a series of books specifically about Lucy Farinelli at some point... but I guess she would have already done that if she’d have thought that was a commercially viable option.

All in all... Port Mortuary is a really great book giving you another giant dose of the near super-human (in intellect) Doctor Kay Scarpetta and fans of this writer and of this character in particular certainly won’t need me to tell them to pick this one up. A solid, good piece of writing from one of the great modern writers. Go get it!