Port Mortuary (Kay Scarpetta Series #18)

by Patricia Cornwell

Overview

The world's bestselling crime writer Patricia Cornwell presents the extraordinary eighteenth novel in the Kay Scarpetta series, in which Kay Scarpetta is confronted with a case that could ruin her professionally and personally.

Kay Scarpetta has been training at the Dover Port Mortuary, mastering the art of 'virtual autopsy' - a groundbreaking procedure that could soon revolutionise forensic science. And it is not too long before these new skills urgently need to be put into practice. A young man drops dead, apparently from a heart condition, eerily close to Scarpetta's home. But when his body is examined the next morning, there are stunning indications that he may have been alive when he was zipped inside a pouch and locked in the cooler.

When the revolutionary 3D radiology scans reveal more shocking details about internal injuries unlike any Scarpetta has ever seen, she realizes that this is a case of murder - and that she is fighting a cunning and uniquely cruel enemy. Now it is a race against time to discover who and why before more people die. But that time is running out . . .

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780425243602
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	08/30/2011
Series:	Kay Scarpetta Series , #18
Pages:	512
Sales rank:	80,178
Product dimensions:	4.23(w) x 7.40(h) x 1.11(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Patricia Cornwell is considered one of the world's bestselling crime writers. Her intrepid medical examiner Kay Scarpetta first appeared on the scene in 1990 with Postmortem—the only novel to win the Edgar, Creasey, Anthony, and Macavity awards and the French Prix du Roman d'Aventure in a single year—and Cruel and Unusual, which won Britain's prestigious Gold Dagger Award for the best crime novel of 1993. Dr. Kay Scarpetta herself won the 1999 Sherlock Award for the best detective created by an American author. Ms. Cornwell's work is translated into 36 languages across more than 120 countries.

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

Editorial Reviews

Two baffling cases of treacherous murder, one long past and one all too recent, dominate this new Kay Scarpetta novel. A South African hate crime at the very beginning of her career merges with a heinous slaying that could be the portent of mass terror. Intense forensic action. Now in mass market paperback and NOOK Book.

Bestseller Cornwell's compelling 18th Kay Scarpetta novel (after The Scarpetta Factor), her strongest work in years, involves the chief medical examiner in a case that's both far-reaching in its national security implications and deeply personal. The story begins at the real Port Mortuary at Dover Air Force Base, where Scarpetta is assisting in developing techniques for virtual autopsies, then shifts back to her recently adopted home at Boston's Cambridge Forensic Center (CFC). A young man's mysterious death becomes even stranger after full-body scans reveal destruction so extensive it's as if a bomb went off inside his body. Scarpetta and husband Benton Wesley-along with her niece, Lucy Farinelli, and ex-cop turned CFC investigator Pete Marino-discover links not only to a government project with the ability to cause mass casualties but also to another grisly case currently under investigation. As Scarpetta's military past rears its head, the emotional damage the investigation of the cases is bound to wreak on Cornwell's steadfast heroine will leave readers eager for the next installment. Long-time fans will welcome the return after a decade to a first-person narration with direct access to Scarpetta's thoughts.
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Publishers Weekly

The 18th installment of Cornwell's best-selling series (after The Scarpetta Factor) weaves together ghosts of Kay Scarpetta's murky military past with modern-day high-tech terrorism. Scarpetta is finishing a fellowship at Dover Air Force Base, where she spends her days dealing in dead U.S. soldiers arriving at Port Mortuary—literally a port for the dead. Meanwhile, back at the Massachusetts-based Cambridge Forensic Center (CFC), where she is the director, disaster is brewing when evidence seems to indicate that a young man may still have been alive when his body was locked up inside the CFC's cooler. As Scarpetta begins to investigate this death, she is astounded to discover wounds inflicted by a new weapon unfamiliar to her. Scarpetta and her team soon realize that a terrifying new nanotechnology is being employed for evil purposes. Cornwell breathes new life into timeworn characters and captivates readers with intensive character development and a detailed plot.Verdict Fans of the Scarpetta series will be clamoring for this fast-paced foray into the intriguing world of forensic science and technological terrorism. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 6/1/10.]—Amy M. Handley, Kent State Univ., Columbus, OH

Library Journal

n this latest installment in the Scarpetta series, Dr. Kay Scarpetta, noted forensic pathologist, is now director of the Cambridge Forensic Center in Massachusetts. While she’s been away at Dover Air Force Base on a six-month assignment, things have gone very wrong at the CFC; the bodies are piling up; her second in command, Jack Fielding, has gone missing; and Kay may be the next target. This dark, brooding story, told in primarily the first person, is mired in detail that lends little and irritates much. Kate Burton's delivery is often rushed. Her credible variation of accents lends interest but cannot overcome the listener’s weariness in the face of so much introspection and useless melodrama. Not Cornwell's best effort. A.C.P. © AudioFile 2010, Portland, Maine

DECEMBER 2010 - AudioFile

Quite a homecoming for Dr. Kay Scarpetta after her six months at Dover Air Force Base—a corpse back in Cambridge that seems to have been locked away in a mortuary still alive.

The man who died a block from Scarpetta's home in Norton's Woods is surrounded by mystery. No one knows his name, how he was killed, whether he died of natural causes or who installed the tiny audio receivers in his headphones and why. The most baffling mystery, however, is why, after collapsing and dying without shedding a drop of blood, he began to bleed hours after being placed in a drawer at the Cambridge Forensic Center. The answer to this riddle, which will plunge Scarpetta up to her elbows in another memorable postmortem investigation, will connect the unknown man to two other murder victims—a star college quarterback and a 6-year-old boy—and to three recent victims of roadside Afghanistan bombs whose memory she thought she'd left behind in Dover. And the connection, some wickedly cutting-edge work in robotics and nanotechnology, gives Scarpetta the chance to interrupt her ongoing quarrels with her posse—her anti-authority niece Lucy, her ex-profiler husband Benton Wesley, her investigator Pete Marino—and show how much she knows about absolutely everything.

"While this is a work of fiction, it is not science fiction," Cornwell announces in a preliminary note. Well, maybe. Though it has little feeling for its new characters and shows the regulars wallowing in complications instead of developing them, there's less of the fulsome self-mythologizing that drove The Scarpetta Factor (2009).

Kirkus Reviews