Scarpetta - Patricia Cornwell

08 January 2009

LONG before the proliferation of CSI shows on TV, Patricia Cornwell was writing unparalleled forensic thrillers.

In fact, she can probably be credited with creating the genre.

Scarpetta (£18.99, Little Brown) is her 16th adrenalin-packed murder mystery featuring the eponymous pathologist and forensics expert.

Recovering from the death of her dear friend Rose and the traumatic assault by her former friend, Pete Marino at the end of The Book of the Dead, Kay is now married to long-time lover Benton Wesley and based in Massachusetts.

It's Christmas and she is called to New York City by Benton to examine a man in a psychiatric ward, who is suspected of murdering his girlfriend and who insists he will only talk to Dr Scarpetta.

When she gets there, she finds that Bane is a dwarf (or what, the Americans call "a little person" - which always sounds patronising to me).

He talks as though he knows her, and yet attributes quotes to her which she has never said.

Is Oscar Bane's bizarre and paranoid story of innocence true, or is he a criminally insane stalker obsessed with Scarpetta?

There are other problems for her, too. What she doesn't know is that Marino is working with the NYPD and there are stories appearing on a spiteful internet gossip column about the two of them.

When Scarpetta's niece is also called in to go through the murdered woman's laptop, the old team is reunited and must put aside their past differences to find the killer.

Then, a second body is found.

Cornwell has again produced a masterful procedural which combines the thrills and spills of a murder mystery with the personal dramas of love and friendship.

There are few who can touch her.

- LINDSAY JONES