Blow Fly
Scarpetta (Book 12)
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A cold case turns red-hot when a death-row inmate renews his acquaintance with Dr. Kay Scarpetta in this “utterly chilling [and] grisly, fast-paced thriller” (Entertainment Weekly).
“Engaging and horrifying . . . a book that fans will want to read for the sheer voyeuristic quality of watching the characters they know so well go beyond their limits.”—Houston Chronicle
IN DEVELOPMENT AS THE ORIGINAL SERIES SCARPETTA STARRING NICOLE KIDMAN AND JAMIE LEE CURTIS
Dr. Kay Scarpetta is settling into her new life as a private forensic consultant and is deep into a case that has left colleagues in Louisiana profoundly disturbed. A woman is found dead in a seedy hotel, dressed to go out, keys in her hand. Her history of blackouts, and her violent outbursts while under their spell, offer more questions than clues about the cause of her death.
Then Scarpetta receives news that chills her to the core: Jean-Baptiste Chandonne—the vicious and unrepentant Wolfman, who pursued her to her very doorstep—has asked to see her. From his cell on death row, he demands an audience with the legendary Dr. Scarpetta.
With friends and family by her side, Scarpetta tries to guess what sort of endgame this madman has in mind and how, if at all, it’s related to the Louisiana case. She begins to unravel a twisting, international conspiracy and then confronts the shock of her life: a blow that will force her to question the loyalty and trust of all she holds dear.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
"Please don't go there. The past is the past," sighs New York Assistant District Attorney Jaime Berger, who herself was introduced in Cornwell's last Kay Scarpetta novel, The Last Precinct (2000). Alas, many of Cornwell's fans are bound to agree. One fascinating nonfiction bestseller (Portrait of a Killer: Jack the Ripper, Case Closed) later, Cornwell now returns to Scarpetta, formerly Virginia's chief medical examiner. From the start, however, the formidable author is up against the equally formidable task of getting her charismatic main character off ice and back in action. We encounter Scarpetta languishing in a crumbling little rental house in Florida. She has taken refuge there and become a private forensic consultant after she was driven from her job for her alleged involvement in the murder of a deputy police chief. The violent death of her lover, Benton Wesley, the brilliant FBI psychological profiler, has left her filled with an unappeasable grief. When the coroner in Baton Rouge asks her advice on a cold case concerning an affluent woman found dead of a drug overdose in a seedy hotel, it seems little more than a diversion. Yet it becomes clear that the overdose may be related to a fresh string of serial killings. Also disturbing Scarpetta's somber peace is a troubling letter from someone out to kill her, the sick and obsessed death-row inmate Jean-Baptiste. When Scarpetta is at last allowed to get back to business, she is a feisty, independent powerhouse whose capacity to concentrate and observe rivals Sherlock Holmes's. But too much of this book is bound up in retrospective musings about events in previous books. The great Scarpetta, her fiery crime-busting niece, Lucy, and a colorful supporting cast deserve better. 1,000,000 first printing; Literary Guild, Doubleday Book Club nd Mystery Guild main selections; foreign sales to Finland, France, Germany, Holland, Italy, Japan, Spain and the U.K..
Customer Reviews
Blow Fly
Caught me reading into the night!
Twisted
Very little foreseeable, hard to imagine how she cooked up the plot and characters.
Hairy beast
I can’t continue reading her books until there is a continuation to tell what happened to the little boy and the hairy beast. I am in limbo.