From the Publisher
The tight plot keeps a local focus, the disconnected deaths are neatly tied together…and there are plenty of stomach-churning autopsies performed with cutting-edge equipment.”—The New York Times Book Review
“An ingenious murder method, more hours in the mortuary and forensics lab than usual, an uncharacteristically muffled killer, and all the trademark battles among the regulars and every potential ally who gets in their way.”—Kirkus Reviews
“The story is nail-bitingly violent and suspenseful, and it highlights Scarpetta’s signature survival instinct, brilliant logic and attention to personal relationships.”—The City Paper (Nashville, TN)
From the Publisher - AUDIO COMMENTARY
“When it comes to the forensic sciences, nobody can touch Cornwell.”
—The New York Times Book Review
Library Journal
First, a leading paleontologist goes missing from a dinosaur dig in Canada. Then a body is heaved out of Boston Harbor. Soon, other curious, unsolved cases pile up, and forensic expert Kay Scarpetta has her hands full. Cornwell has been struggling lately; see what happens, and buy for her fans.
NOVEMBER 2012 - AudioFile
Chief Medical Examiner Kay Scarpetta returns in Cornwell’s solid mystery series. This 20th installment is narrated, as usual, by Kate Reading, whose crisp, assertive tone personifies the intensity and raw intelligence of Dr. Scarpetta. Once again up to her elbows in a grisly murder investigation, Scarpetta speculates about connections between a booby-trapped body in the nearby bay and a missing dinosaur paleontologist from Canada. Reading portrays Scarpetta with a dark disquiet and a cynical outlook as she is in the midst of a shaky phase with her husband, Benton, and simultaneously second-guessing her relationships with both her niece, Lucy, and her longtime colleague Marino. Reading conveys Scarpetta’s new bitterness and her determination to set her world right again. N.M.C. © AudioFile 2012, Portland, Maine
Kirkus Reviews
Having survived brushes with ruthless killers, human monsters and treacherous colleagues of every stripe (Red Mist, 2011, etc.), forensic pathologist Dr. Kay Scarpetta limps into her 20th case to encounter more of the same. Scarpetta's latest casts her as Zeno trying to overtake the tortoise. Before she can track the provenance of the video that's been emailed to her--a video apparently featuring footage of missing University of Alberta paleontologist Emma Shubert's severed ear--she has to testify, however unwillingly, for the defense in Channing Lott's trial for the murder of his vanished wife. Before she can leave for court, she has to examine the mummified remains of an unidentified woman who's been spotted in Boston Harbor--an examination that has to begin instantly, before the deterioration delayed by the corpse's long period of climate-controlled storage resumes at top speed. But before Scarpetta can get the corpse on a slab, it'll have to be gently cut loose from the leatherback turtle who's gotten tangled up with it, an animal whose endangered species status gives it priority over a mere human cadaver. The first half of this sprawling, ambitious tale may make the reader feel like Zeno as well, constantly struggling to catch up to what Scarpetta already knows about the latest round of traumas posed by her husband, Benton Wesley, her niece, Lucy Farinelli, and her investigator, Pete Marino. It's not till the second half, when Cornwell hunkers down to tie all these cases together, that excitement rises even as disbelief creeps in. An ingenious murder method, more hours in the mortuary and forensics lab than usual, an uncharacteristically muffled killer, and all the trademark battles among the regulars and every potential ally who gets in their way.
