A woman has vanished while digging a dinosaur bone bed in the remote wilderness of Canada. Somehow, the only evidence has made its way to the inbox of Chief Medical Examiner Kay Scarpetta, over two thousand miles away in Boston. She has no idea why. But as events unfold with alarming speed, Scarpetta begins to suspect that the paleontologist’s disappearance is connected to a series of crimes much closer to home: a gruesome murder, inexplicable tortures, and trace evidence from the last living creatures of the dinosaur age. When she turns to those around her, Scarpetta finds that the danger and suspicion have penetrated even her closest circles. Her niece Lucy speaks in riddles. Her lead investigator, Pete Marino, and FBI forensic ...
This Women Sleuths give to us some advantages, like this :
1. Still Missing the 90s
What can I say about Scarpetta number twenty? I didn't dislike the book, but in my opinion, Cornwell has yet to produce a follow-up book that is in anyway comparable to the quality of her first six to eight books. This review does contain a few mild spoilers!
Before I air my complaints, I will give credit where credit is due. Bone Bed reintroduces readers to the Kay Scarpetta they met in Virginia. For the first time in I don't know how many books, Scarpetta is back in her diving gear and working the crime scenes like she used too. That is the one thing I really appreciated about this book. Kay is sharp. I had forgotten what an impressive investigator she could be. As she goes through a crime scene, very little escapes her attention. Her intelligence, ambition, and compassion are magnetic. I can't speak for everyone, but that is the character that captured my attention and held my interest in 90s.
With that said, I found her supporting characters highly annoying...
2. Sigh. Still rambling and unfocused.
Cornwell's Scarpetta books have always had their flaws, like Kay's enemies never getting their comeuppance, and Kay's addiction to being betrayed and the world champion victim even as she is supposed to be so awesome smart and powerful. Other annoyances are continual buildups to climaxes that never happen, for example Marino threatening to stroke out over every little thing, and Lucy's non-stop drama over nothing (geez Lucy is obnoxious), and characters and subplots that get introduced, are a big deal, and then are dropped and never resolved. But the complex plots, good action, and complex trails of clues were enjoyable and interesting. Then along about "Point of Origin" the Scarpetta series slid off the rails and never made it back. Benton Wesley died, but then miraculously came back in "Blow Fly." But in the interim anything that was halfway interesting about him was lost, and he became a stiff wooden bore.
In "Blow Fly" Cornwell changed from writing in the first-person...
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The True Scarpetta
"The Bone Bed" by Patricia Cornwell
Published by Putnam
Hardcover Edition: 463 pages
Genre: Mystery
Maybe Cornwell needed to write the last eight Scarpetta novels to get where she is now: back to basics. Back to where avid readers of the series remember the true Chief Medical Examiner, Dr. Kay Scarpetta: a resilient, no-nonsense, vulnerable human being.
The Bone Bed, the 20th novel in the ongoing Scarpetta series, is a solid, riveting return and homage to the early years. The novel is also a much more personal journey for Scarpetta. She struggles with aging in a raw intensity like we have never seen before. In a past squabble that occurred between she and husband, Benton, she recalls that night in Vienna: "I feel Benton's implications like an internal injury, a depressing symptom of being damaged..."
The image of Scarpetta's psychologist friend, Anna Zenner, a "confidante of old," brings readers back to that quiet time in an earlier...
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