Despite her personal problems, Scarpetta is still the reigning diva at the department of death. She is sent to investigate the putrefied remains of a man found inside a container ship, "eyes bulged froglike, and the scalp and beard were sloughing off with the outer layer of darkening skin." Kay finds strange, animal-like hairs on the man's clothing--the same hairs that she discovers on a murdered store clerk a few days later. In actuality, the bizarre killings extend well beyond Virginia; whoever killed the Richmond victims also butchered people in France. Kay and police captain Pete Marino are whisked off to Paris where they must collect top-secret information from a Paris morgue, and avoid becoming victims themselves.
This macabre tome is the stuff that classic Scarpetta tales are made of: creepy but compulsive autopsy scenes, plentiful plot twists, and the compelling, if slightly more vulnerable chief medical examiner herself. --Naomi Gesinger
...ContinuaNew characters are introduced and are well written so that the reader is either hating them and wishing scarpetta handles what she needs to or wanting justice to be served. This novel continues the story of the team and some of the new struggles that are being forced upon them
...ContinuaAs a mystery type of novel, the suspenseful story is fascinating for the readers. I knew that Scarpetta would run into the killer at the very end. It almost looked like that it wouldn't happen. But it did at the very end. I'm a bit tired of the stereotypes of the characters, Marino always shouting and being unreasonable in contrast to Kay who is smarter, richer, more cool-headed and more educated etc. etc. The killers would always succeed until they faced with Kay at the end of the novel. That's the formula. The forensic findings are only secondary in this novel. This book also adds enemies from the inside, an element that may be found in a few others of the Scarpetta series.
A few typos: p. 115 (14th line): "Do we if know Lucy..." should be "Do we know if Lucy...". p. 327 (27th line): "...let you know you right away..." should be just "...let you know right away...". p. 366 (2nd line): "...wants to us to do..." should be "...wants us to do...".
...Continua
