The Bone Bed (Kay Scarpetta Series #20)

by Patricia Cornwell

Overview

From one of the world’s number top selling crime writers comes the extraordinary twentieth Kay Scarpetta novel.

A woman has vanished while digging a dinosaur bone bed in the remote wilderness of Canada. Somehow, the only evidence has made its way to the inbox of Chief Medical Examiner Kay Scarpetta, over two thousand miles away in Boston. She has no idea why.
 
But as events unfold with alarming speed, Scarpetta begins to suspect that the paleontologist’s disappearance is connected to a series of crimes much closer to home: a gruesome murder, inexplicable tortures, and trace evidence from the last living creatures of the dinosaur age.
 
When she turns to those around her, Scarpetta finds that the danger and suspicion have penetrated even her closest circles. Her niece Lucy speaks in riddles. Her lead investigator, Pete Marino, and FBI forensic psychologist and husband, Benton Wesley, have secrets of their own. Feeling alone and betrayed, Scarpetta is tempted by someone from her past as she tracks a killer both cunning and cruel.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780425261361
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	09/03/2013
Series:	Kay Scarpetta Series , #20
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	496
Sales rank:	42,566
Product dimensions:	4.20(w) x 7.50(h) x 1.20(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Patricia Cornwell is one of the world’s major internationally bestselling authors, translated into thirty-six languages in more than fifty countries. She is a founder of the Virginia Institute of Forensic Science and Medicine; a founding member of the National Forensic Academy; a member of the Advisory Board for the Forensic Sciences Training Program at the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, New York City; and a member of the Harvard-affiliated McLean Hospital’s National Council, where she is an advocate for psychiatric research. In 2008, Cornwell won the Galaxy British Book Awards’s Books Direct Crime Thriller of the Year—the first American to win this prestigious award. In 2011, she was awarded the medal of Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters by the Ministry of Culture in Paris. Her most recent bestsellers include Red Mist, Port Mortuary, The Scarpetta Factor, The Front, and Portrait of a Killer: Jack the Ripper. Her earlier works include Postmortem—the only novel to win five major crime awards in a single year—and Cruel & Unusual, which won Britain’s Gold Dagger Award for best crime novel of 1993. Dr. Kay Scarpetta herself won the 1999 Sherlock Award for the best detective created by an American author.

Hometown:

Boston, MA and New York, NY

Date of Birth:

June 9, 1956

Place of Birth:

Miami, Florida

Education:

B.A. in English, Davidson College, 1979; King College

Website:

http://www.patriciacornwell.com

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

“When it comes to the forensic sciences, nobody can touch Cornwell.”

—The New York Times Book Review

Editorial Reviews

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

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.

Library Journal

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

NOVEMBER 2012 - AudioFile

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.

Kirkus Reviews