2008 Book 111: Book of the Dead

Book #:	111
Book Title:	Book of the Dead
Author:	Patricia Cornwell
Publisher:	Penguin
Pub. Date:	2009
Pages:	326
Started:	December 28, 2008
Finished:	December 31, 2008
Time to Read:	4 Days
Back Cover / Inside Flap:	"The Book of the Dead is the morgue log, the ledger in which all cases are entered by hand. For Kay Scarpetta, however, it is about to acquire new meaning. Fresh from her bruising battle with a psychopath in Florida, Scarpetta decides it's time for a change of pace, not only personally and professionally, but also geographically. Moving to the historic city of Charleston, South Carolina, she opens a unique private forensic pathology practice, one in which she and her colleagues - including Pete Marino and her niece Lucy - offer expert crime scene investigation and autopsies to communities lacking local access to competent death investigation and modern technology. It seems an ideal situation, until the new battles start - with local politicians, with entrenched interests, with someone whose covert attempts at sabotage are clearly meant to run her out of town. And that's even before the murders and other violent deaths begin. A sixteen-year-old tennis star, fresh from a tournament win in Charleston, is found nude and mutilated near Piazza Navona in Rome. The body of an abused young boy is dumped in a desolate marsh. A woman is ritualistically murdered in her multimillion-dollar beach house. Meanwhile, in New England, problems with a prominent patient at a Harvard-affiliated psychiatric hospital start to hint at interconnections among the deaths that are as hard to imagine as they are horrible. Scarpetta has dealt with many brutal and unusual crimes before, but never a string of them as baffling, or as terrifying, as the ones facing her now. Before she is through, that book of the dead will contain many names - and the pen may be poised to write her own."
Stars:	****
Review:	I've complained in the past about reading a book that is several books into a series without reading the preceding volumes. In this case, that matters not - one can easily pick up this story and start reading and feel like they've been involved with the characters all along. The pace in this book is outstanding - and what a pace it has to be to fit in so very much in just over 300 pages! I am impressed with the level of detail used - but written in such a way that is easily understood. One complaint is that I needed a bit deeper character development, but I'm sure if I read the other books in this series, I'll learn much much more about the people who seemed real to me after just a few hundred pages. Great read - pick it up!

If you have read or are planning to read this book, please make sure to stop back by and leave me a comment to let me know your own thoughts!

From my library to yours,

Tiffany