2009 Book 15: The Last Precinct

Book #:	127
Book Title:	The Last Precinct
Author:	Patricia Cornwell
Publisher:	G. P. Putnam's Sons
Pub. Date:	2000
Pages:	449
Started:	March 17, 2009
Finished:	March 20, 2009
Time to Read:	4 Days
Back Cover / Inside Flap:	"We enter The Last Precinct through the reverberating aftershocks of Black Notice, inconceivably finding Virginia's Chief Medical Examiner Kay Scarpetta an object of suspicion - and criminal investigation.  And the nightmare perpetuated on Scarpetta's doorstep continues as she discovers that the so-called Werewolf murders may have extended to New York City and into the darkest corners of her past.  When a formidable prosecutor, a female assistant district attorney from New York, is brought into the case, Scarpetta must prevail against mounting and unnerving evidence to the contrary.  Tested in every way, she turns inward to ask, Where do you go when there is nowhere left?  The answer is the Last Precinct.  By the end of the novel, it is clear that Scarpetta's life can never be the same."
Stars:	****
Review:	I find it regrettably that I've read my Patricia Cornwell novels out of order - it bugs me when I read about the same characters time and time again, but the sequence of what happens is helter-skelter.  Fortunately, Cornwell writes so well and weaves in backstory so masterfully that I never feel truly lost or wondering what I've missed in the other volumes.  In this particular work, I am especially in love with the way that Cornwell shifts to write about what can happen when her beloved main character is cast with the same suspicion that she more typically casts upon others.  The strength of the character that Cornwell has created in Kay Scarpetta is apparent on every page of this book, in times of hope and despair.  And as always, Cornwell mixes in the legalese with a masterful hand that makes the work interesting but not impossible to understand.  Highly recommend!

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

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