Autopsy: The new Kay Scarpetta thriller from the No. 1 bestselling author (The Scarpetta Series Book 25)

With the whitehouse and space stories woven expertly into scarpetta liquid writing, it's a wonderful set of layers set up to fall like dominoes. Ever the mistress of the pathology crime writers scene.

This is the 25th Scarpetta book and Kay is back in Virginia as Chief Medical Officer something she is already thinking may be a mistake. Benton now works for the secret service. Marino is married to Dorothy, Kay’s sister and Lucy, Kay’s niece, has lost both her partner Janet and their adopted son Desi to COVID. The house that Kay and Benton have bought has been having a lot of work done on it and within the grounds is a gatehouse where Lucy is living.The book opens with Kay in her office contemplating the next National Emergency Contingency Coalition (aka: the Doomsday Commission) which next meets at the White House. Proximity to Washington meant working in Alexandria which is where the OCME is. It’s after Thanksgiving and a storm is brewing. Kay packs up for the day. It’s Lucy’s birthday and a small gathering is taking place.Kay has a body awaiting identification in the morgue downstairs. Maggie, her inherited secretary and the bane of her life since returning to Virginia, tells Kay that August Ryan requires her assistance. Ryan is the U.S. Park Police investigator on the case of the unidentified body. He wants Kay to meet him. Why? Maggie say he’ll explain! Kay is resigned to cancelling Lucy’s gathering. She speaks with Ryan. There’s a missing person, could it be the body downstairs? Maybe.Gwen Hainey, 33 yrs old, a biomedical engineer at Thor Labs working on special projects is reported to the police by her employer as she hasn’t been seen for a while. A local police officer, Officer Fruge, was the first responder to the scene of death of the unidentified, handless body found near railway tracks. She is the same officer making a wellness check on Gwen Hainey. Kay doesn’t remember her from the original scene at Dangerfield Island but recognises the name. Prompted by Ryan she recalls having worked with a toxicologist of that name years ago in Richmond. Officer Blaise Fruge is her daughter. On top of this Gwen Hainey lived in Colonial Landing which is the gated community where her sister and Pete Marino live.Later that day the family gather to raise a glass in celebration of Lucy’s birthday. Kay chooses a bottle of wine. It’s one that was given to her in Lyon the previous month by Gabriella Honoré the Secretary General of Interpol. After uncorking it Kay takes a taste and immediately reacts with dizziness, passing out!Still suffering from the after effects of the bad wine Kay, along with Benton, gets a call they have got to go to a special meeting there’s been an incident in space! Kay has no idea why she’s there but as things unfold appalling deeds and terrifying possibilities are revealed, links are being made that put a brand new light on everything!There’s also the need to consider another, older case Kay thinks. Is she making links that aren’t there? Marino tells her to follow her instincts. Will this lead them to a double murderer or not?As always Patricia Cornwell brings us a twisty and twisted tale. A story that has an undercurrent of deep personal sadness as Lucy, who was settling into a stable, loving and happy relationship at last, now has to deal with a terrible loss.There are a lot of things that Kay has to do in order to get the OCME working in a professional way and that’s not easy with a boss who was the root cause of all the issues along with an assistant who clearly still wishes that she was working for him and is disrespectful, disruptive and passing information to him. It’s hard enough for Kay to have all her responsibilities without having to second guess her actions not knowing who she can trust or rely on! Still, there is work to be done regarding the body in the morgue, the old case, the poisoned wine and the incident in space. Will Kay survive, both physically and professionally, long enough to find out what happened to the two women? As the story progresses resolutions will come but not without adversity.Patricia Cornwell has a way of writing that draws you into this complex story and you are gripped. Then as each new twist comes you will be wondering what is going on, how everything will be resolved and whether there can possibly be a way forward for Kay!I have read all the Scarpetta books and enjoyed them Autopsy is another terrific read and one that fans of Cornwell will, no doubt, love.Book: Purchased

Great product and price

I fell out with the Scarpetta series a while ago, but when this was recommended, I thought I’d give them another whirl, as I really enjoyed the early ones. I was glad to see that all of my favourite characters are still around, and the interactions between them have such a natural, real feel, just as I remember. The book started off well, and I found myself wondering why I had fallen out with them. I liked the new (to me) characters and the difficulties they bring. There was so much to like. The middle of the book started to feel a bit clunky to me, and it lost a lot of the natural flow, raising questions and feeling distinctly far-fetched for a variety of reasons. And as for the end… well, what can I say? Did the publisher bring the deadline forward? It made no sense to end it in that way and I'm surprised that it was published in that format.I love murder mystery novels and part of the enjoyment is trying to work out who the perpetrator is, how they did it and why; I’m quite good at that. It’s always good to have a few red herrings and to kick yourself for getting potentially obvious things wrong. This book, other than one very obvious element that could only be included to support a later action, gives you precisely none of that. And the infuriating thing is that you just know that the author is capable of so much more and you’ve been robbed of the experience.

Almost back to her earlier story telling. Not too much technical detailed description which spoiled some of her later books

I really enjoyed this book. I felt Scarpetta had gone through the doldrums a bit of late, but this was Kay and co back to their finest.I deducted a star because of a very very rushed ending. Everything wrapped up lightening fast, and whilst i do much prefer it if all the unanswered questions are answered by the end of the book, I feel that this one needed a n extra chapter or two to unpick it all.

Fine

Love it

Great read as usual. One of my favorite authors never disappoints.

Wonderful twenty-fifth Scarpetta Book. In this book Scarpetta, Benton and Lucy have moved back to Virginia where Scarpetta has been hired as The Chief Medical Examiner, again. This book is five years after the twenty fourth book, Chaos ended and a lot has happened since the events in Chaos. Most significantly is that Lucy's wife Janet and her adopted son Desi were stuck in France during the worst of the Covid-19 pandemic and they both died of the disease and because of the pandemic Lucy was unable to even get to them. Marino has married Scarpetta's sister and Lucy's mother Dorothy and they also moved from Massachusetts to Virginia when Scarpetta, Benton and Lucy did. In this book Scarpetta adjusts to her new position and has to adjust to a nasty intrusive secretary named Maggie who is still reporting to her old boss, the former chief medical examiner who was promoted to being Scarpetta's boss. A woman is brutally murdered and Scarpetta realizes that another death, that was signed out as an accidental death was actually another murder by the same killer. Scarpetta is also called in to handle an emergency that happened in space.

Ottimo libro; finalmente Kay Scarpetta è tornata

I won't join in the chorus of complaints about this book being used as a pretext to advance the Covid agenda and heaping opprobrium on Ms Cornwell for it, because conspiracy theory/ists can go and boil its/their head/s. I'll stick to the book as a work of fiction.I must have read some of her stuff in the past and probably enjoyed it, but after looking for something to put in my Kindle after finishing a good book late one evening and finding this, I have to say that I found it very disappointing. So much writing about...well, not very much: it takes several chapters to go from A to B, in a tooled up SUV with enough equipment on board to never need to go shopping again and with so much detail including the makes and models of all the weaponry she and others are toting with them, pointless intrigue and office politics, everything she, her husband and anyone else around eats, everybody's related to someone else in the book, autopsies by proxy in what seems a totally irrelevant murder case, the same style trick being used over and over (direct speech dialogue interlarded with comments starting with 'and', such as ..and I know how she must be feeling... or ...and her attitude tells me otherwise). I only finished it because I rarely drop a book midway.Double plus ungood, I'm afraid.

Yes, it‘s strange, the killer is a person they never mention in the book, you only ever hear about him, when at the end they suddenly and abruptly name him as the solution. And then there is that other strange story in the outer space, which will most probably come back in the next book. It‘s not only Lucy who‘s a mega universal talent in that family… Too strange to be taken seriously…