Product Description

It is the week before Christmas. The effects of the credit crunch have prompted Dr Kay Scarpetta to offer her services pro bono to New York City's Office of the Chief Medical Examiner. But in no time at all, her increased visibility seems to precipitate a string of dramatic and unsettling events. She is asked live on the air about the sensational case of Hannah Starr, who has vanished and is presumed dead. Moments later during the same broadcast, she receives a startling call-in from a former psychiatric patient of Benton Wesley's. When she returns after the show to the apartment where she and Benton live, she finds a suspicious package ? possibly a bomb ? waiting for her at the front desk. Soon the apparent threat on Scarpetta's life finds her embroiled in a deadly plot that includes a famous actor accused of an unthinkable sex crime and the disappearance of a beautiful millionairess with whom Lucy seems to have shared a secret past...

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #59 in Books
• Published on: 2009-10-20
• Released on: 2009-10-15
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 512 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
How does Patricia Cornwell manage to keep her literary batteries charged? Long-time admirers always breathe a sigh of relief when (after various experiments and diversions) she brings her signature character Kay Scarpetta back to the fray. But the author is savvy enough to realise that it is (occasionally) a good idea to ring the changes, which she did successfully in such non-Scarpetta books as The Front, with a Massachusetts investigator assuming centre stage. But, let’s face it, it’s her new book, The Scarpetta Factor that is going to be the real crowd pleaser, with her single-minded forensic anthropologist back on the case.

Since the groundbreaking Post Mortem which introduced the character, there have been some ups and downs in terms of Cornwell’s achievement, but nobody could deny that the author has earned her poll position at the top of the crime-writing stakes by dint of her remarkable narrative skills. Are those skills on full throttle here?

In the week before Christmas, Kay Scarpetta, suffering (as are so many of us) from the credit crunch, decides to work on a pro bono basis for the office of the Chief Medical Examiner of New York City. But Kay finds the spotlight this puts her under is not a comfortable one, when she is asked (during a live broadcast) about the disappearance of a wealthy woman, Hannah Starr, who is presumed to be dead. This is followed by a strange call from an ex-patient of Kay’s psychiatrist partner, Benton Wesley -- and Kay finds a suspicious package when she returns home – is it a bomb? She finds that the missing woman had secrets she shared with Kay’s gay niece Lucy.

Perhaps this isn’t Patricia Cornwell at her most adroit, but it’s much more than a routine outing for Scarpetta. Admirers will want to pick up The Scarpetta Factor. --Barry Forshaw

About the Author
Patricia Cornwell is the 2008 winner of the Galaxy British Book Awards' Books Direct Crime Thriller of the Year ? the first American ever to win this prestigious award. Postmortem was the only novel to win five major crime awards in a single year and Cruel and Unusual won the coveted Gold Dagger Award in 1993.

Customer Reviews

Searching for the Scarpetta Factor
I loved the early Scarpetta books and reread them until the characters were like old friends. In the last couple, however, I no longer recognise these friends. Scarpetta Factor continues the trend. In fact, I question the title choice since Scarpetta hardly features in it. We have Berger and Lucy and endless technical jargon which would be boring even if I understood half of it! Benton seems to have undergone a metamorphosis where his vocabulary has shrunk to the f-word (whereas he never swore before). Marino is a lost soul. The plot revolves around victims we have not met and know nothing about. The hitherto fascinatingly repulsive Chandonne is now a pantomime villain. Patricia Cornwell has lost touch with readers who loyally buy her new books. She needs to get back in touch with the characters she created and who, like her readers, deserve better than this pretentious prose.

The World's Number 1 Thriller Writer? What did we do to deserve that?
I loved the first half-dozen Scarpetta books with their taut plots, the put-upon and appealing main character, and the complex mysteries. I hadn't minded the repetition such as Scarpetta always becoming the killer's chosen next victim, as that was the series' format. But gradually the stories became meandering and I stopped reading.

Having missed about six books I came back to the saga with a fresh mind, but I hardly recognized this story as belonging to a series that included such gripping novels as The Body Farm and Cruel and Unusual. It's very rare for me to give up on a book, but this one I couldn't finish. It's perhaps unfair to review a book I only half-read, but then again the author didn't care enough to write with due care and attention and I doubt a capable editor worked on it, so why should I worry?

The plot is hard to follow and what I could work out was the opposite of a page-turner. The set-up promises some celebrity satire, but the story is humourless and dreary. Scenes don't flow. Dialogue is just random chatter and whining. There's no tension as I didn't care about or particularly believe in the mystery, and the new format of multiple points of view just appears to make it easier to add irrelevant diversions. Everything is explained in a condescending manner that gave me visions of the author making notes for research assistants and them quoting unnecessary detail they'd found on the Internet. In the early books the detail felt real and necessary and gave the books authority. I believed in Scarpetta's world. Now I don't.

Worst of all, the characters are no longer the same people I last read about. The only link with the Lucy I remember is the name. Scarpetta herself is now insufferably smug. She didn't irritate me before, but she does now with everything she says and does. Perhaps that's by design, but it's not a design I like as I want to be able to empathise and care about the supposed good guys.

For me anyhow this series has collapsed under the weight of its franchise obligations. I'm sorry to say that as I really did want to enjoy a good thriller mystery. Judging by its position in the selling charts I assume lots of people love this meandering style of thriller and I'm in the minority with that view. In fact I checked the reviews here two days ago, wondering if my growing irritation was down to me being overly picky, and the glowing five star rating here and the huge number of reviews lauding this book on the US site encouraged me to give it another couple of nights. But it still didn't click. Please don't shout at me. That's just my opinion! It doesn't stop anyone else from thoroughly enjoying this book!

I rate the early books in this series as masterpieces, but as far as I was concerned this came over as a lazy contractual exercise that exists for no reason other than to get people to part with their money, and no matter if I'm out of line in not liking the current style of the World's Number 1 Thriller Writer, I won't be doing that again.

Given up hope
The only reason I gave this book two stars, is that two earlier offerings in the Kay Scarpetta series Blow Fly and Predator were even more awful than this one! I loved Ms Cornwell's earlier books, but ever since Black Notice her books have deteriorated. This book is no exception: the usual conspiracy theories, endless pages of psycho babble and characters that have lost all credibility! I only enjoyed the last few pages where Scarpetta is cooking up a feast and which reminded me of her first few books. I have officially given up hope that this series will ever get back to its former quality.