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Book of the Dead Patricia Cornwell 9780399153938 Books

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Book of the Dead Patricia Cornwell 9780399153938 Books

After about 6 of her novels, I swore that I would never buy another Cornwell book again. Yet when the author herself described this as her worst novel yet, I could not resist, and yup, I bought it. She did not exaggerate; if anything she was overly positive about the book. Endless nagging conversations over troubled relationships, flat predictable characters recycled from past novels, and a minimum of text devoted to the mystery itself make this, sans doute, the most profoundly unreadable book yet in the series. I strongly recommend avoiding it. In a recent interview Ms. Cornwell promised to do better.


Tags : Book of the Dead [Patricia Cornwell] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. Relocating to Charleston after a particularly grueling case, Dr. Kay Scarpetta opens a private forensic pathology practice but is quickly targeted by local politics and a covert saboteur before a series of violent deaths bring her skills into high view. 1,Patricia Cornwell,Book of the Dead,G.P. Putnam's Sons,0399153934,AZ2372,Thrillers - General,Forensic pathologists;Fiction.,Medical examiners (Law);Fiction.,Women physicians;Fiction.,AMERICAN MYSTERY & SUSPENSE FICTION,CORNWELL, PATRICIA DANIELS - PROSE & CRITICISM,FICTION Mystery & Detective Women Sleuths,Fiction,Fiction - Mystery Detective,Fiction Thrillers General,Fiction Thrillers Suspense,Fiction-Mystery & Detective,Forensic pathologists,GENERAL,General Adult,Medical examiners (Law),Monograph Series, any,Mystery & Detective - Women Sleuths,MysterySuspense,Scarpetta, Kay (Fictitious character),South Carolina,Suspense,Thrillers,United States

Book of the Dead Patricia Cornwell 9780399153938 Books Reviews

This is the first book of Patricia Cornwell's that I've read. I was surprised that a book by a best-selling author would be so disjointed. Story lines are confusing, plot development was poor and sometimes random and the ending was unsatisfactory. Perhaps I should have read books 1-14 before reading this one, but I was under the impression they were "stand-alone". I definitely should have read the reviews before buying it. I'm unlikely to purchase any others.
That she had to conform to that jaded subset of readers who insist that all characters in a book (including the starring cast) must be screwed up in a big way? That if you wtite about crime, there aren't supposed to be good guys or bad guys per se--that it's supposed to be dysfunctional character(s) versus other dysfunctional character(s)? Or the aforementioneed subset of spoiled brats with mama's library card will get boo-oo-ored (sob-sob), which today is considered more an act of war than an actual act of aggression against some people. Has everything today been taken over by these overage adolescents? In deference to this bunch's wishes, it seems that Cornwell has moved Kay Scarpetta & Co move more in the direction of dysfunctionality in every book she puts out. In this book, we've got a young tennis phenom who has been murdered in a quasi-subhuman way that nowadays we're "s'pozed ta" see as "a cry of help" from some sicko. Also in the mix is a pretentious and hateful TV pop-shrink who's an old menesis of Kay's, who's figuratively pulled the poor girl's britches down on her TV show, which is basically a Jerry Springer-ish abomination pseudo-legitimzed by a psych degree. Scarpetta's main dilemma in each book used to be who whacked the person whose body she's got in her lab--now she's got the guy who used to be her Sipowicz-clone investigator, plus her one time "auntie's girl" niece, doing what Neil Young once termed "comin' apart at every nail". Marino has de-evolved into a quasi-thug who only exploits the concern that people close to him have for his welfare. I know Lucy had to grow up sometime, but did it have to be into a distaff Steven Seagall clone? You have to know these people from Cornwell's earlier works to be able to empathise with them at all. And Cornwell had best consider the possiblity that she can't count on us forever.
I started with Kay Scarpetta way back in the days of Postmortem, and this novel is AWFUL, Cornwell's worst by far. The mark of a wise writer is to quit before the plots become convoluted and characters become irrelevant.
I liked the Kay Scarpetta series back when the first few books came out, and then I lost interest in the late '90s. Thanks to this coming across my BookBub list, I spent two bucks and three hours reminding myself why I am no longer a Cornwell fangirl.

Although more or less competently written (though the repeated iteration of "Let's don't do this" was driving me up the wall), this book is ten different kinds of a mess. There's no mystery here; it's an awkward amalgam of forensic science (interesting, I guess, but with no real human element), a poem to Rome, a Dear John letter to Charleston, and some annoying pseudopsychology around death, assault, and avoidant attachment styles...with a big dollop of gardening advice. Although the murderer is described as having meaningful rituals, once he's revealed, the meaning of these rituals is inadequately explained. The reader knows pretty much from the second chapter who he is, so there's very little suspense.

There's a small bit of interest in the character of manipulative pop psychologist Dr. Marilyn Self, who appears to function as Kay Scarpetta's externalized shadow side. The novelty of this wears off in about five minutes, however, leaving the character overly obvious, lacking in nuance.

Recommended for people fascinated by gunshot residue, and those who still share the author's patently obvious fascination with the character of Scarpetta. This is perhaps less a novel than it is the author's own extended autoerotic fantasy, so if convoluted psychological voyeurism is your thing, this is the book for you.
I thought Predator was bad. This book reaches new lows. Cornwell's characters are, if anything, more disturbed and obnoxious than ever. I want to smack Lucy, shoot Marino, and shake Kay till her teeth rattle. Murders are thrown in willy-nilly, almost as if she ran out of plot so she introduced another one but not in any sort of chronological order. The parts written from the killer's perspective are so confuddled you don't know which murder he's committing, or why, and you don't really care. Plenty of extraneous characters who contribute nothing to the plot. The return of the god-awful Dr. Self - could we just murder her already? And a new annoying device - instead of telling us how the investigation proceeds, she has two characters talk about it, after the fact, in dialogue that goes on for so many pages, with so few identifying marks that you lose track of who's supposed to be talking.

Cornwell used to be a great author, and I loved her earlier books. But she seems to have developed an intense hatred for her own characters, which makes her books increasingly painful to read.
After about 6 of her novels, I swore that I would never buy another Cornwell book again. Yet when the author herself described this as her worst novel yet, I could not resist, and yup, I bought it. She did not exaggerate; if anything she was overly positive about the book. Endless nagging conversations over troubled relationships, flat predictable characters recycled from past novels, and a minimum of text devoted to the mystery itself make this, sans doute, the most profoundly unreadable book yet in the series. I strongly recommend avoiding it. In a recent interview Ms. Cornwell promised to do better.