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.