Black Notice (Scarpetta)

Product Information

For the third book in a row, Cornwell intimates that Benton’s death would be more accurately described with quotation marks around the word, that something is seriously amiss despite the autopsy report. While the behavioral symptoms expressed by Kay are primarily those of grief, the behaviors exhibited by Marino and Lucy are more exactly attributed to guilt, to the keeping of secrets. And those secrets are eating them alive. After leaving her job as a journalist behind, in 1985 she started working with the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner of Virginia, where she stayed for six years. This is the very place that her fictional character, dr. Kay Scarpetta, would work in as well.

This action on Bray’s part is actually illegal according to Virginia state law and makes any evidence obtained from the body now inadmissible in court. When Kay informs Bray that the State Prosecutor’s Office will take a very dim view of her illegal actions, the gauntlet is thrown and we know that only one of the two will survive – professionally, personally or both. Thankfully nothing really bad happened, but it was enough to shake her to the core. When her brother appeared on his bicycle, the guy was trying to take Patricia to his car, which would have most likely ended up in her death. Her first novel, Postmortem, was written during this time, and while initially it was not successfully received, it was eventually published, and it became the first book in her popular crime series. This basically launched her writing career.The author is living in Boston where she is working on her next book. Unfortunately, these situations are just the tip of the proverbial iceberg. Before she can finish the autopsy on “Container Man,” Kay discovers that her grief-driven blinders have hidden from her several very serious problems that have occurred over the last few weeks in her own office. One is the almost daily theft of everything from cell phones to paper clips from the more open areas of the Medical Examiner’s Office.

Reader Reviews

After the ending of her first marriage, in 2005 Cornwell married Stacy Ann Gruber, a psychiatry professor at Harvard, with whom she lives in Boston, Massachusetts. That said, with the book before this, Point of Origin, there's at least some hint that Scarpetta's starting to understand the impact of keeping her sense of moral indignation running on high, 24 / 7: "You're awfully straight and narrow, aren't you, Kay?" McGovern stated. "Unlike the rest of us, you never seem to use poor judgment or do anything wrong. You probably never overeat or get drunk. And to be honest, it makes the rest of us schleps feel afraid to be around you, afraid you'll look at us and disapprove." If you ever want a prime example of a book series that has taken a sharp nosedive in quality, this is the one.

Patricia Cornwell sold her first novel, Postmortem, in 1990 while working as a computer analyst at the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner in Richmond, Virginia. Postmortem, was the first bona fide forensic thriller. It paved the way for an explosion of entertainment featuring in all things forensic across film, television and literature. I'm starting to be disillusioned with the Scarpetta series. The characters are getting harder to like--including Kay Scarpetta herself--and the plots are just so-so. We have a bad guy, he kills a lot of people, Marino and Scarpetta go after him, Kay has a brief fling, the killer tries to kill Kay, the end. Thirdly, the four-months new Deputy Chief, Diane Bray, arrives on scene, oozing power, seduction and entitlement with every step, the epitome of sexual harassment and bullying in the workplace. Bray makes it clear to Kay that she is responsible for the new protocols at the crime scene and that she has deliberately reassigned Marino so as to break up the professional relationship between Marino and Kay. And Bray goads her about Benton’s death.At least Agatha Christie aged her characters normally. If she were alive, I’m sure she would bitch slap Patricia Cornwell.