Dust

Scarpetta, Book 21

By: Patricia Cornwell

Narrated by: Kate Reading

Length: 14 hrs and 7 mins

Publisher's summary

After working one of the worst mass killings in U.S. history, Scarpetta returns home to Cambridge, Massachusetts. Exhausted and ill, she's recovering at home when she receives an unsettling call. The body of a young woman has been discovered on the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's rugby field. The victim, a graduate student named Gail Shipman, is oddly draped in ivory linen and posed in a way that is too deliberate to be the killer's first strike. A preliminary examination in the sea of red mud where the body has been left also reveals a bizarre residue that fluoresces blood red, emerald green, and sapphire blue.

Physical evidence links the case to a series of uniquely weird homicides in Washington, D.C., where Scarpetta's FBI husband has been deployed to help capture a serial killer dubbed the Capital Murderer. The cases all connect and yet seem to conflict. Gail Shipman was murdered for financial gain - or was she? It will require the usual ensemble of characters to find out the truth, including Scarpetta's sidekick Pete Marino, who has undergone a drastic change in his life that places him center stage in a Cambridge investigation that puts everyone at risk.

©2013 Patricia Cornwell (P)2013 Penguin Audio

Please stop the bad accents!

Any additional comments?

I listen to audiobooks for the entertainment factor. Why is it that Everyone is from Brooklyn? If you live in MA, you sound like NY. Marino should sound like NY, but like a magoo like that? I start to lose track when everyone has the same accent. Kay, on the other hand, sounds like she knows all and is just barely willing to share with us. In other words, perfect.

Greatt

As usual I loved it and I thought that it was very suspenseful. I believe Granby was a coward.

I used to love Kay Scarpetta books

I don't know what has happened, but I just don't care for the characters any more. Kay is whiney and self-obsessed. Benton is dull. Lucy is not very likable. Marino is one-dimensional. The plot was weak and I only made it half way through before I gave up. Perhaps it improved in the 2nd half (?) but I couldn't bear it.

Ashes to Ashes

Another good read from Cornwell. Multiple storylines, going in different directions. Great character development and interactions. Another fun who done it.

We always enjoy Kay Scarpetta; story is typical.

Would you consider the audio edition of Dust to be better than the print version?

Prefer Kay's adventures on audio. Narration is always excellent and riveting.

Would you be willing to try another book from Patricia Cornwell? Why or why not?

Always buy her new titles.

Have you listened to any of Kate Reading’s other performances before? How does this one compare?

Excellent like the others.

Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?

No. There was a long pause between some of the chapters, but we picked up right where we left off.

awesome murder mystery. love scarpetta murders

This makes my work out fly by.
great way to treat and get healthy.
can't wait to start another mystery

Stopped listening

The narrator ruins this book. So annoying, bland. He voice changes for different characters but there is no change. It’s just the same sound through the book enough so I stopped listening. I could not listen.

Scarpetta at her best -- Back in the saddle

This novel opens with Scarpetta and Marino contraposed in time to series novels of old. Early in the series, Marino was a Richmond Detective and Scarpetta was the Richmond Chief Medical Examiner. In this novel, Marino has left Scarpetta high and dry after 10 years of service and gone to work as a detective in Cambridge while Scarpetta is Chief for Medical Examiner for Massachusetts. One should take note that Cornwell is returning to strong roots that made this series great - it is about time!

Kate Reading does a fabulous job in narration -- as always. She has been narrating since book 10 and as Dust is book 21, she has mastered the characters and all their nuances.

A murder takes place on the MIT campus. Cornwell does her setting research thoroughly describing the university campus-- an area I know well. Finally, the old gang of characters we enjoy so much is externally focused on solving a murder and mayhem that is not of their own doing or within their ranks. Sure, there are still plenty of interpersonal complications as we have come to expect from the author -- nevertheless, this novel is much stronger and puts the series back in the right direction.

This novel will appeal to the loyal followers who have hoped for better from Scarpetta and is finally getting it. Also, it is okay to read as the first in the series, it will entice you to go back and read the first of this series and to follow through with the rest. I give it a big thumbs up!

Concerns about Sandy Hook CT content

Would you try another book from Patricia Cornwell and/or Kate Reading?

I have read all the other Cornwall books; I did not care for this one. I'm not done yet, but the initial incorporation of the tragedy at Sandy Hook CT into the story line distresses me immensely. This tragedy was real enough for those of us who had family and neighbors directly involved, and has no place in a fictional crime novel just a year after it happened - it feels like sensationalism and just a way to sell books. A fictional scenario could and would have been just effective to the story line. Cornwell tries to portray Scarpetta as extremely upset about the incident and to show how this impacts her behavior but it still trivializes a very real and very tragic massacre into a work of "fiction".

In addition, the first five chapters were extremely hard to follow when I was listening. Place and time jumped about and it was very difficult to follow.

How would you have changed the story to make it more enjoyable?

Take out the references to Sandy Hook; try fictional writing for real and have pity on the survivors of Sandy Hook - its just brutally unkind and really not necessary.

Not Patricia's Best

If you could sum up Dust in three words, what would they be?

Soap Opera Coroner

Did the plot keep you on the edge of your seat? How?

No

What does Kate Reading bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?

She does great, but if the author brings anymore characters in the next book, she will have to get help for Kate Reading.

Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?

Bryce and the help he gives thru out the story.