Postmortem: Scarpetta 1

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Petersen’s eyes slowly lifted. Deep blue, bloodshot, they seemed relieved as they fixed on me. The doctor had arrived, a ray of hope where there was none. You can come on in, Doc,” the officer with the video camera was saying. “I’ve got all this on film.”

Postmortem by Patricia Cornwell - AbeBooks Postmortem by Patricia Cornwell - AbeBooks

Meanwhile in her personal life, Scarpetta must deal with the presence of her extremely precocious ten-year-old niece, Lucy, as well as an uncertain romantic relationship with the local Commonwealth's attorney. The chief of police and a major sat inside an unmarked beige car, the interior light on, their faces pale as they periodically nodded and made remarks to reporter Abby Turnbull. She was saying something to them through an open window. Waiting until we were on the street, she trotted after us. and Ms Cornwell has finally returned to what her heroine knows best. Because she has returned to speak with and for the dead, mostly those who met a violent end. There are - as always when she has to repair what others had undone - unfriendly higher echelons, a commanding secretary - but her co-workers in the labs love her. An open doorway led into a corridor running the length of the house. To my right appeared a series of rooms, to the left was the kitchen, where Marino and a young officer were talking to a man I assumed was the husband.

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Granted there were moments in the book that had me enraptured, but these were few and far between. I only really remember one of these moments, which was at the very end of the book. Scarpetta is a true hero -- someone to admire, someone to fear. She will always solve the case even in the most intricate complex ones out there. The style is strong, the descriptions and setting vivid. You feel like you are in the story along side the protagonist.

Postmortem by Patricia Daniels Cornwell | Goodreads Postmortem by Patricia Daniels Cornwell | Goodreads

Literature’s what he said,” Marino replied, glancing around at everything but me. “He’s getting his Ph.D.” Benton Wesley - FBI profiler. "He was FBI right down to his Florsheim shoes, a sharp featured man with prematurely silver hair suggesting a mellow disposition that wasn't there. He was lean and hard and looked like a trial lawyer in his precisely tailored khaki suit and blue silk paisley-printed tie. I couldn't recall ever seeing him in a shirt that wasn't white and lightly starched. He had a master's degree in psychology and had been a high school principal in Dallas before enlisting in the Bureau, where he worked first as a field agent, then undercover in fingering members of the Mafia, before ending up where he'd started, in a sense." [1] Spiro Fortosis - professor of Criminal Psychiatry at University of Virginia. He and Kay know each other from the start of Kay's career. Crime reporting was aggressive in Richmond, an old Virginia city of 220,000, which last year was listed by the FBI as having the second-highest homicide rate per capita in the United States. It wasn’t uncommon for forensic pathologists from the British Commonwealth to spend a month at my office to learn more about gunshot wounds. It wasn’t uncommon for career cops like Pete Marino to leave the madness of New York or Chicago only to find Richmond was worse.As recently as two years earlier, the killer’s nonsecreter status would have been a crushing blow to the forensic investigation. But now there was DNA profiling, newly introduced and potentially significant enough to identify an assailant to the exclusion of all other human beings, provided the police caught him first and obtained biological samples and he didn’t have an identical twin.

Postmortem plot summary - Books tldr Postmortem plot summary - Books tldr

Cornwell uses great research to bring the book to life as well, from detailed forensics, police jargon, and computer-speak. This being before the wonders of GOOGLE, she took a great amount of time to thoroughly present things in a believable way. I cannot attest as to whether it was truthful, but it sounded as such. Anyone (like me) looking for a great series that many people have lauded, should surely begin with this novel and continue on the great journey Cornwell lays out for Dr. Scarpetta.

He muttered in the truncated sentences of a mind fragmented, stunned, “I talked to her on the phone. Last night. She told me she’d be home around twelve-thirty, home from VMC, the ER. I got here, found the lights out, thought she’d already gone to bed. Then I went in there.” His voice rose, quivering, and he took a deep breath. “I went in there, in the bedroom.” His eyes were desperate and welling, and he was pleading with me. “Please. I don’t want people looking at her, seeing her like that. Please.” The childhood years of the future Mrs. Billy Graham were spent light-years away--in the China of the 1920s and 1930s. The daughter of medical missionaries, she and her family were caught in a crucible of unspeakable hardship; in addition to pestilence and plague, there was the unstable political and military turmoil surrounding the Nationalist government, the Communists, and the Japanese invaders. These hazardous realities shaped Ruth Bell and her family, a family inured to difficulties, but buoyed up by their deep belief in God's abiding will. Forensic pathologist Kay Scarpetta has returned to Virginia as the chief medical examiner. Finding herself the new girl in town once again after being away for many years, she’s inherited an overbearing secretary and a legacy of neglect and possible corruption.