I will never download or read another Scarpetta. I am so tired of Lucy i could scream.

After avoiding Patricia Cornwell novels for the past several years due to their steady and rapid decline in quality, I recently decided to give her another try. My opinion, unfortunately, remains preserved. Cornwell has become increasingly drunk with anger, and her characters, previously smart and calculating, have become moody, irrational and utterly unappealing. Too many authors who have a successful series of books with recurring characters often succumb to the need to make said characters more and more "complex" and "tortured" in each subsequent book, which merely leads to overemotional, unreasonable heroes and heroines whose downward spirals of indulgence into their dark inner souls merely serves to repeatedly and jarringly interrupt the storyline and annoy the reader. Ms. Cornwell, please go back to writing good, detailed, forensic laden murder mysteries filled with twists, false leads, and realistic characters, and leave the contrived psychoanalysis where it belongs, which is basically anywhere but in this book.

cornwell has gotten away from telling a good story about a crime and spends too much of this book with her characters in angry, destructive internal dialog that really goes no where. her prior books followed an interesting crime with a different twist on solution. in this book it's hard to find the crime and focus on the bad guys - was there really a crime at all? my last cornwell book.

This is not like her other books. I will stop on this book. It just tells the same thing over and over..

Disjointed. Repetitive. Seems all characters have personal problems with each other, creating a dark, moody reading experience. Several implausible plot lines. Seemed like author deliberately tried to make the story longer with technical and psychological sidebars. Not an enjoyable read.

I used to look forward to every Cornwell release, but not anymore. The "psycho-babble" she insists on inserting in place of the intrigue of her classics gets old really fast. There isn't an untarnished personality among the regulars and new characters are used to fuel the torment in the minds of the regulars. People in real life overcome their demons if they are as brilliant as Cornwells characters are portrayed to be. I won't be rushing to her next release.

Not even an easy listen. It took days for me to even care about this book or the characters. So sorry I loved this series it just isn't very good anymore. Reader is lackluster as is the story line.

I have read all of the Scarpetta books and I have to say this is the worst. The storyline was drawn out, no continuity and the ending was ridiculous. No more of this for me...not worth the credits.

I am unaware of listening to this narrator previously. Her reading is spotty, with some characters fully developed and others almost wooden in delivery. Scarpetta specifically is poorly portrayed. The author makes a shift in the way she tells the story, with more inner monologue from Scarpetta. Interesting.

I've always been a big Cornwell fan and especially like the Scarpetta series. For me, this one was just awful. Part of it was the narration - so flat and monotone and depressing. All the characters were either depressed or angry. And there were too many subplots - it took forever to see how any of them tied together. The last book was similar, but this one was sleep-inducing - I kept switching to music in the middle of the book, which I rarely do. Everyone needs to lighten up - all the characters and the narrator.