Product Description

A reclusive writer is dead. And her final manuscript has disappeared ... Someone is stalking Beryl Madison. Someone who spies on her and makes threatening, obscene phone-calls. Terrified, Beryl flees to Key West - but eventually she must return to her Richmond home. The very night she arrives, Beryl inexplicably invites her killer in ... Thus begins for Dr Kay Scarpetta the investigation of a crime that is as convoluted as it is bizarre. Why would Beryl open the door to someone who brutally slashed and then nearly decapitated her? Did she know her killer? Adding to the intrigue is Beryl's enigmatic relationship with a prize-winning author and the disappearance of her own manuscript. As Scarpetta retraces Beryl's footsteps, an investigation that begins in the laboratory with microscopes and lasers leads her deep into a nightmare that soon becomes her own.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #14200 in Books
• Published on: 2000-04-13
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 387 pages

Sunday Telegraph
'Cornwell is the one to beat when it comes to slick, speedy chillers'

Daily Mail
'A great writer ... read these books only in broad daylight'

The Times
'Head under bed clothes tension'

Customer Reviews

even more disappointing than the first
Having read Post Mortem and picked up more mistakes in sloppy writing than I care to think about (as both writer and editor) I hoped for better from a second attempt at crime writing from Ms Cornwell. Unfortunately, the only reason I could find for the 'Head-under-the-bedclothes tension' quote from The Times was how long the sorry saga could be dragged out.
Chapter 1, line 1.
Returning the Key West letters to their manilla folder, I got out a packet of surgical gloves - exactly the sort of writing I complained of in book 1. Ms Cornwell needs to learn the word 'After' as in "After I returned the Key West letters to their manilla folder" as it is impossible to do the two things simultaneously.
And we have these dreadful coincidences going on again. She needs to stay over at Harper's house to find the other dead body so we have an oh-so-convenient flat battery. But how? Why? She started the car to get there! A single line 'damn, I had left the lights on and drained the battery' would have sufficed and it would have taken her as long as it just took me to type that line, a few seconds. Reading fiction means we are asked to suspend belief. But there is only so far a reader can be asked to suspend belief, a touch of realism goes a long way, as in explaining in one line why a battery which was perfect when she left home should die in a few hours. Contrived, convoluted, and ultimately dull to the point when I could not be bothered to find out why Mark was in her life or who killed the novelists. I won't be reading any more of Ms Cornwell's books.

A bit of a slow starter
this year I decided to start Cornwell's Dr. Kay Scarpetta series. I had high hopes for her first 'postmortem' and was frankly, a bit let down. I think this second attempt is much better than post mortem but is a tad slow to get goin and I also thought it was all a bit confusing at times. That said there are some moments of really high tension and suspense and an introduces some interesting new characters that really make me want to go out and get the 3rd in the series.

Tension Galore
I didn't think I'd ever be saying this about a police procedural with a female protagonist, but I actually enjoy the romance between Kay Scarpetta and Mark James. Cornwell is the absolute best at making her characters real.

When a reclusive writer is brutally stabbed to death after being denied police protection, Dr. Scarpetta gets on the case. However is she on the trail of the killer or is the killer of the killer or is the killer on her trail?

There is tension galore in this book, however, I was a little disappointed in the ending, because I didn't think we were given enough clues to figure out who the killer was. I sort of felt, you know, cheated, as I'd spent so much time thinking about the clues that didn't point to the bad guy at all, so overall I guess I have to give this book four stars.

Review submitted by Captain Katie Osborne