Product Description

The Body Farm - a research institute that tests the decomposition of corpses. Black Mountain, North Carolina: a sleepy little town where the local police deal with one homicide a year, if they're unlucky, and where people are still getting used to the idea of locking their doors at night. But violent death is no respecter of venue, and the discovery of the corpse of the corpse of an 11-year-old girl sends shock waves through the community. Dr Kay Scarpetta, Chief medical Examiner on a similar case in Virginia, is called in to apply her forensic skills to this latest atrocity, but the apparent simplicity of the case proves something of a poisoned chalice - until Scarpetta finds enlightenment through the curious pathologists' playground known as the Body Farm ...For more about Patricia Cornwell and her books visit her website at www.patricia-cornwell.com

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #5812 in Books
• Published on: 2000-04-13
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 416 pages

Review
'There can be little doubt that Cornwell is America's most stimulating and chilling writer of crime fiction. But even she will find it difficult to better The Body Farm.' The Times 'There are passages in Cornwell's novels which stop you in their tracks ... [she] deploys prose like a scalpel' Literary Review 'The pathologist of human evil' Observer

Literary Review
'There are passages in Cornwell's novels which stop you in their tracks ... [she] deploys prose like a scalpel'

Observer
'The pathologist of human evil'

Customer Reviews

THERE IS NO FARMER IN THE DELL...ONLY A KILLER...
This story begins in the mountains of North Carolina, where eleven year old Emily Steiner lived. She had left a youth meeting at her church one afternoon and was on her way home. She never arrived. A week later, her nude, lifeless body was found.

Kay Scarpetta, medical examiner and noted forensic pathologist, is called in by the North Carolina authorities, After an initial review, she believes that the murder may have been commited by serial killer, Temple Gault. Long known to the FBI, He has managed to elude capture and remains at large. More careful review of the forensic evidence, however, leaves her with unanswered question that initially puzzle her. As she endeavors to untangle these strange and tantalizing clues, she realizes that they begin to point away from Gault and in a direction more horrifying than anyone ever imagined.

Meanwhile, Dr. Scarpetta must contend with other issues closer to home. Her troubled niece, Lucy, an intern at the FBI facility at Quantico, becomes enmeshed in a legal controversy that threatens to derail her future employment hopes. Scarpetta's long time associate and homicide detective, Pete Marino, may have bitten off more than he could chew and has personally gotten involved with Emily Steiner's mother. Meanwhile, Dr. Scarpetta, herself, is undergoing a certain amount of personal angst over the sexual tension that is building between her and married FBI agent, Benton Wesley. All these personal concerns overlay her investigation for Emily Steiner's killer.

The forensic questions that arise from Emily's murder lead Dr. Scarpetta to "The Body Farm", a secret research facility in Tennessee, where some of the answers to her questions may be found. It is the forensic clues and their analysis by Dr. Scarpetta that provide the most interesting aspects of the book. All in all, It is another excellent addition to the Kay Scarpetta series and well worth reading.

The Body Farm
Being number five in the series of Dr Kay Scarpetta novels, any fan would now be enjoying not only the excellent individual storylines of these books, but also enjoying the connecting themes that run through the series. Unfortunately this is where The Body Farm fell a little short of the previous books for me.

**Possible Spoilers**

Firstly again Scarpetta has undergone a major personal change since the last book that doesn't seem to be totally covered. At the end of the previous book, Cruel and Unusual, she was planning to work more closely with FBI Profiler Benton Wesley and then this books starts with her not only working with him but embarking on an affair with him also. Whilst I don't question the possibility of this happening it would have been nice to have had longer to see the relationship develop, not see them jump into bed in the opening chapters. Secondly the book centres on the happenings of Lucy, Dr Scarpetta's niece, who was never my favourite character in the books. Whilst trying to explain Lucy's insecurities and anger at her own mother I've always found her character comes over as spoilt and ungrateful rather than sad and tragic. At first I was dreading reading so much about her, but actually by the time of finishing the book I have warmed slightly to her character, not least because the books describes the first face to face meeting of Dr Kay and Lucy's mother, her sister, Dorothy. A wonderful self-centred bitchy character that is great fun to read.

The actually "thriller" storyline in the book is good, but again not maybe as good as some of those that have gone before. Scarpetta, who is forever reminding everyone else that evidence and proof is needed to suspect someone of a crime, seems to leap on the eventual suspect in this murder very early on and pursues her on what seemed to me to be very flimsy clues.

Not the strongest book in the series, but I will definitely return for more.

Cornwell's best
This was the second of Cornwell's books that I read and it prompted me to go out and buy the rest. In the character of Kay Scarpetta she combines the high-flying female professional with a softer, emotional side and makes her real. Readers can really empathise with her. In the second half of the book you can feel the murderer home in and form a ring around her as you fear for her safety. This is an excellent book for avid readers of crime fiction and also for people like me who have never read a crime book before. After having read all of Cornwell's books I can say that this is the best of them all.