About Patricia Cornwell
Patricia Cornwell's series of crime novels featuring the forensic examiner Dr Kay Scarpetta are international bestsellers. She is also the author of two police procedurals and the biography of Ruth Graham. She divides her time between Virginia and New York.

Bibliography:

Kay Scarpetta
1. Postmortem (1990)
2. Body of Evidence (1991)
3. All That Remains (1992)
4. Cruel and Unusual (1993)
5. The Body Farm (1994)
6. From Potter's Field (1995)
7. Cause of Death (1996)
8. Unnatural Exposure (1996)
9. Point of Origin (1998)
10. Black Notice (1999)
11. The Last Precinct (2000)
12. Blow Fly (2003)
13. Trace (2004)
14. Predator (2005)
15. Book of the Dead (2007)
16. Scarpetta (2008)
17. The Scarpetta Factor (2009)

Andy Brazil
1. Hornet's Nest (1997)
2. Southern Cross (1999)
3. Isle Of Dogs (2001)

Winston Garano
1. At Risk (2006)
2. The Front (2008)


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Andy Brazil 01 - Hornet's Nest



Deputy Chief Virginia West likes and respects her boss, Hammer, but with an increasing number of visiting businessmen being murdered in her city by a maniac with a penchant for painting his victims bright orange, she finds it hard to accept Hammer's edict that a rookie reporter should ride on patrol with her to better relations with their citizens. Her worst fears are confirmed when the reporter, Brazil, presses the button to activate the boot-release rather than the siren on their first outing. He's not the only blight on her life right now: her cat's angsty, her hormones are misbehaving, her opposite number in the uniformed division is behaving like a jackass, the radio despatcher is determined to trip her up, the D.A. is in the middle of a hot battle with the trial schedule. And orange coloured corpses keep turning up on her patch.





*this topic has been split into single book posts. All posts below are credited to TOMY*

Andy Brazil 02 - Southern Cross



Judy Hammer has accepted the challenge of Richmond, Virginia's police department to try and reverse the escalating crime statistics in the city. She brings with her Deputy Chief Virginia West and Andy Brazil, now a full-time police officer. They find a lot of things they are all too familiar with - teenage gangs, a rash of robberies at cash dispensers, street corner drug-dealing, racial tensions, too many people with too many guns and a cardiac inducing lack of parking spaces.
They also meet resentment from the established police force and over-high expectations from the city's institutions. Then a computer virus crashes the police computer, freezing their screens with a design of blue fish, and the same blue fish appears on the statue of Jefferson Davis, which a graffiti artist has turned into a black basketball player and a gang called the Pikes claim it is their symbol, which also has links to the robberies. In an incredibly fast-moving police procedural Patricia Cornwell takes her readers on a roller-coaster ride of action and emotion.




*split from Tomy's original post, with credit to Tomy*

Andy Brazil 03 - Isle of Dogs



Newly installed superintendent of the Virginia State Police, Judy Hammer, and her right hand and confidant, Andy Brazil, are at their wits' end trying to protect the public from the politicians - and vice versa. And amid the mayhem an island off the coast of Virginia declares UDI - claiming its independence lies in the history of America's first settlers, those who set sail from London's Isle of Dogs in 1607.





*split from Tomy's original post, with credit to Tomy*

Kay Scarpetta 01 - Postmortem



A serial killer is on the loose in Richmond, Virginia. Three women have died, brutalised and strangled in their own bedroom. There is no pattern: the killer appears to strike at random - but always early on Saturday mornings. So when Dr Kay Scarpetta, chief medical officer, is awakened at 2.33 am, she knows the news is bad: there is a fourth victim. And she fears now for those that will follow unless she can dig up new forensic evidence to aid the police. But not everyone is pleased to see a woman in this powerful job.
Someone may even want to ruin her career and reputation ...




*split from Tomy's original post, with credit to Tomy*

Kay Scarpetta 02 - Body of Evidence



A reclusive writer is dead. And her final manuscript has disappeared ... Someone is stalking Beryl Madison. Someone who spies on her and makes threatening, obscene phone-calls. Terrified, Beryl flees to Key West - but eventually she must return to her Richmond home. The very night she arrives, Beryl inexplicably invites her killer in ... Thus begins for Dr Kay Scarpetta the investigation of a crime that is as convoluted as it is bizarre.
Why would Beryl open the door to someone who brutally slashed and then nearly decapitated her? Did she know her killer? Adding to the intrigue is Beryl's enigmatic relationship with a prize-winning author and the disappearance of her own manuscript. As Scarpetta retraces Beryl's footsteps, an investigation that begins in the laboratory with microscopes and lasers leads her deep into a nightmare that soon becomes her own.




*split from Tomy's original post, with credit to Tomy*

Kay Scarpetta 03 - All that Remains



A killer is stalking young lovers. Taking their lives ... and leaving just one tantalising clue ...

When the bodies of young courting couples start turning up in remote woodlands areas, Dr Kay Scarpetta's task as Chief Medical Examiner is made more difficult by the effects of the elements. Eight times she must write that the cause of death is undetermined. But when the latest girl goes missing turns out to be the daughter of one of the most powerful women in America, Kay finds herself prey to political pressure and press harassment. As she starts to investigate, she finds that vital evidence is being withheld from her - or even faked. And all the time a cunning, sadistic killer is still at large ...




*split from Tomy's original post, with credit to Tomy*

Kay Scarpetta 04 - Cruel and Unusual



The fingerprints say the murderer is the man who's just been executed ...

At 11.05 one December evening in Richmond, Virginia, convicted murderer Ronnie Joe Waddell is pronounced dead in the electric chair. At the morgue Dr Kay Scarpetta waits for Waddell's body. Preparing to perform a post-mortem before the subject is dead is a strange feeling, but Scarpetta has been here before. And Waddell's death is not the only newsworthy event on this freezing night: the grotesquely wounded body of a young boy is found propped against a rubbish skip. To Scarpetta the two cases seem unrelated, until she recalls that the body of Waddell's victim had been arranged in a strikingly similar position ...




*split from Tomy's original post, with credit to Tomy*

Kay Scarpetta 05 - The Body Farm



The Body Farm - a research institute that tests the decomposition of corpses.

Black Mountain, North Carolina: a sleepy little town where the local police deal with one homicide a year, if they're unlucky, and where people are still getting used to the idea of locking their doors at night.

But violent death is no respecter of venue, and the discovery of the corpse of the corpse of an 11-year-old girl sends shock waves through the community. Dr Kay Scarpetta, Chief medical Examiner on a similar case in Virginia, is called in to apply her forensic skills to this latest atrocity, but the apparent simplicity of the case proves something of a poisoned chalice - until Scarpetta finds enlightenment through the curious pathologists' playground known as the Body Farm ...




*split from Tomy's original post, with credit to Tomy*

Kay Scarpetta 06 - From Potters Field



Christmas had never been a particularly good time for Dr Kay Scarpetta. Although a holiday for most, it always seem to heighten the alienation felt by society's violent fringe; and that usually means more work for Scarpetta, Virginia's Chief Medical ExaminerI. The body was naked, female and found propped against a fountain in a bleak area of New York's Central Park. Her apparent manner of death points to a modus operandi that is chillingly familiar: the gunshot wound to the head, the sections of skin excised from the body, the displayed corpse - all suggest that Temple Brooks Gault, Scarpetta's nemesis, is back at work.
Calling on all her reserves of courage and skill, and the able assistance of colleagues Marino and Wesley, Scarpetta must track this most dangerous of killers in pursuit of survival as well as justice - heading inexorably to an electrifying climax amid the dark, menacing labyrinths of the New York subway.




*split from Tomy's original post, with credit to Tomy*

Kay Scarpetta 07 - Cause of Death



An investigative reporter is found dead in Virginia's icy waters ... New Year's Eve and the final murder scene of Virginia's bloodiest year takes Scarpetta thirty feet below the Elizabeth River's icy surface. A diver, Ted Eddings, is dead, an investigative reporter who was a favourite at the Medical Examiner's office. Was Eddings probing the frigid depths of the Inactive Shipyard for a story, or simply diving for sunken trinkets?
And why did Scarpetta receive a phone call from someone reporting the death before the police were notified? The case envelops Scarpetta, her niece Lucy, and police captain Pete Marino in a world where both cutting-edge technology and old-fashioned detective work are critical offensive weapons. Together they follow the trail of death to a well of violence as dark and forbidding as water that swirled over Ted Eddings.




*split from Tomy's original post, with credit to Tomy*

Kay Scarpetta 08 - Unnatural Exposure



A sadistic serial killer, the weapon a deadly virus Dublin, Ireland and Richmond, Virginia: separated by thousands of miles - linked by murder. For Dr Kay Scarpetta a lecture stint in Ireland provides the perfect opportunity to find out if the murders on both sides of the Atlantic are indeed connected. Five dismembered, beheaded bodies were found in Ireland five years ago - now four have been discovered in the States. But the tenth corpse in Virginia is different.
There are vital discrepancies, and an indication that the elderly victim was already seriously ill. A copy-cat killing. Ghoulish, perhaps, but not unusual. And then abject terror grips Scarpetta and her colleagues when the next body is found. The circumstances of death broadcast a clear and horrifying message: the killer is armed with the most lethal weapon on earth - smallpox.




*split from Tomy's original post, with credit to Tomy*

Kay Scarpetta 09 - Point of Origin



A farmhouse destroyed by fire. A body amongst the ruins. Dr Kay Scarpetta, Chief Medical Examiner and consulting pathologist for the federal law enforcement agency ATF, is called out to a farmhouse in Virginia which has been destroyed by fire. In the ruins of the house she finds a body which tells a story of a violent and grisly murder.
The fire has come at the same time as another, even more incendiary horror: Carrie Grethen, a killer who nearly destroyed the lives of Scarpetta and those closest to her, has escaped from a forensic psychiatric hospital. Her whereabouts is unknown, but her ultimate destination is not, for Carrie has begun to communicate with Scarpetta, conveying her deadly - if cryptic - plans for revenge.
Chillingly mesmeric in tone, labyrinthine in structure, POINT OF ORIGIN is Patricia Cornwell at her most dazzling.




*split from Tomy's original post, with credit to Tomy*

Kay Scarpetta 10 - Black Notice



An intriguing Dr Kay Scarpetta novel which will take Kay an ocean's breadth away from home. The case begins when a cargo ship arriving at Richmond, Virginia's Deep Water Terminal from Belgium is discovered to be transporting a locked, sealed container holding the decomposed remains of a stowaway. The post mortem performed by the Chief Medical Examiner, Kay Scarpetta, initially reveals neither a cause of death nor an identification.
But the victim's personal effects and an odd tattoo take Scarpetta on a hunt for information that leads to Interpol's headquarters in Lyon, where she receives critical instructions: go to the Paris morgue to receive secret evidence and then return to Virginia to carry out a mission. It is a mission that could ruin her career. In a story which crosses international borders, BLACK NOTICE puts Dr Kay Scarpetta directly in harm's way and places her and those she holds dear at mortal risk.




*split from Tomy's original post, with credit to Tomy*

Kay Scarpetta 11 - The Last Precinct



Physically and psychologically bruised by her encounter with the killer Chandonne, Dr Kay Scarpetta has to leave her home in the hands of the police team investigating the attack. She finds shelter with an old friend, Anna Zenner, but it is not the haven of security she needs when she discovers that Anna has been sub-poenaed to appear before a Grand Jury which is investigating Scarpetta for murder. Kay knows she is being framed and she also knows she can trust no-one.
Meanwhile it appears that Chandonne killed a woman in New York before his murderous spree in Virginia, but when Scarpetta looks more closely into that case with the NY prosectuor Jaime Berger, proof of his guilt is far from certain - in fact she begins to believe that he may not be the perpetrator of any of the crimes he is accused of. As she follows the forensic trail to the real killer she gradually realises that someone has been spinning a web for years with the aim of entrapping her.




*split from Tomy's original post, with credit to Tomy*

Kay Scarpetta 12 - Blowfly



Dr Kay Scarpetta has left Virginia in quest of peace but instead finds herself drawn into baffling, horrific murders in Florida, where she becomes entangled in an international conspiracy that confronts her with the shock of her life. 'All of Cornwell's books run on high octane fuel, a cocktail of adrenalin and fear . such is her grip on her audience and such is her ability to suck you into her hermetic, claustrophobic world that Scarpetta's tension becomes the reader's. Her fear is contagious, her adrenaline levels boost your own.'




*split from Tomy's original post, with credit to Tomy*

Kay Scarpetta 13 - Trace



Since Postmortem garnered critical acclaim and a record-breaking five awards for a first crime novel, the Scarpetta novels have often been imitated, but never bettered. Blow Fly saw the world famous medical examiner forced out of Virginia, the media harassing her at every turn, and the serial killer, Chandonne, determined to break the woman who put him behind bars. It also brought Benton Wesley back into her life, her lover and soulmate whose supposed death had left her bereft and alone.
Now she is revitalised and determined to regain control of her professional life. She is called back to Virginia where she had been chief medical examiner to work on the investigation into the dark, lonely death of a 14-year- old girl. Scarpetta follows a trail too feint for the human eye to see but which eventually leads to a truth that may be more than she can bear.




*split from Tomy's original post, with credit to Tomy*

Kay Scarpetta 14 - Predator



Kay Scarpetta and her colleagues-Benton Wesley, Pete Marino, and her niece Lucy Farinelli-return to a series of forensic cases as haunting as any they have ever tackled. Working with the National Forensic Institute in Florida, Scarpetta and Marino examine the X-rays of a man who has died from a shotgun blast to the chest. But the pellets embedded show a strange 'pinball' pattern and the two can't help but wonder if this points to suicide-or to murder.

In an abandoned house in the rural South, a woman is held against her will. Her captor is unknown to her-and indeed unseen-but even in the dark, she knows that he is near. And on Cape Cod, Lucy awakens to a gray winter morning and the sure feeling that she has made a dreadful mistake.




*split from Tomy's original post, with credit to Tomy*

Kay Scarpetta 15 - Book of the Dead



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 have a 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 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 that lack local access to competent death investigation and modern technology.
It seems like 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 young man from a well-known family jumps off a water tower. A woman is found ritualistically murdered in her multi-million-dollar beach home. The body of an abused young boy is discovered dumped in a desolate marsh. Meanwhile, in distant New England, problems with a prominent patient at a Harvard-affiliated psychiatric hospital begin to hint at interconnections 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 that face 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.




*split from Tomy's original post, with credit to Tomy*

Kay Scarpetta 16 - Scarpetta



“Leaving behind her private forensic pathology practice in Charleston, South Carolina, Kay Scarpetta accepts an assignment in New York City, where the NYPD has asked her to examine an injured man on Bellevue Hospital’s psychiatric prison ward. The handcuffed and chained patient, Oscar Bane, has specifically asked for her, and when she literally has her gloved hands on him, he begins to talk—and the story he has to tell turns out to be one of the most bizarre she has ever heard.

The injuries, he says, were sustained in the course of a murder . . . that he did not commit. Is Bane a criminally insane stalker who has fixed on Scarpetta? Or is his paranoid tale true, and it is he who is being spied on, followed and stalked by the actual killer? The one thing Scarpetta knows for certain is that a woman has been tortured and murdered—and more violent deaths will follow. Gradually, an inexplicable and horrifying truth emerges: Whoever is committing the crimes knows where his prey is at all times. Is it a person, a government? And what is the connection between the victims?

In the days that follow, Scarpetta; her forensic psychologist husband, Benton Wesley; and her niece, Lucy, who has recently formed her own forensic computer investigation firm in New York, will undertake a harrowing chase through cyberspace and the all-too-real streets of the city—an odyssey that will take them at once to places they never knew, and much, much too close to home.

Throughout, Cornwell delivers shocking twists and turns, and the kind of cutting-edge technology that only she can provide. Once again, she proves her exceptional ability to entertain and enthrall.”




*split from Tomy's original post, with credit to Tomy*

Kay Scarpetta 17 - Scarpetta Factor



It is the week before Christmas. A tanking economy has prompted Dr. Kay Scarpetta - despite her busy schedule and her continuing work as the senior forensic analyst for CNN - to offer her services pro bono to New York City's Office of the Chief Medical Examiner. In no time at all, her increased visibility seems to precipitate a string of unexpected and unsettling events. She is asked live on the air about the sensational case of Hannah Starr, who has vanished and is presumed dead. Moments later during the same telecast she receives a startling call-in from a former psychiatrist patient of Benton Wesley's. When she returns after the show to the apartment where she and Benton live, she finds an ominous package - possibly a bomb - waiting for her at the front desk. Soon the apparent threat on Scarpetta's life finds her embroiled in a surreal plot that includes a famous actor accused of an unthinkable sex crime and the disappearance of a beautiful millionaires with whom Lucy seems to have shared a secret past.

Scarpetta's CNN producer wants her to launch a TV show called The Scarpetta Factor. Given the bizarre events already in play, she fears that her growing fame will generate the illusion that she has a 'special factor,' a mythical ability to solve all her cases. She wonders if she will end up like other TV personalities: her own stereotype.

The Scarpetta Factor, the seventeenth in the series, finds the familiar cast of characters together again in New York. Marino is working for the NYPD; Benton Wesley uses his forensic psychological expertise at Kirby and Bellevue; and Lucy continues to dazzle with her expertise in forensic computer investigations as she works yet another case with NY prosecutor Jaime Berger.




*split from Tomy's original post, with credit to Tomy*

WOW , you RAWK HELENA
dang,

Tomy rocks! Those are all his finds.
I just split Tomy's first post into separate posts.
so... I'm just going to forward all that love his way, I'm sure he'd appreciate all those hearts
Whoo!