Autopsy

The Scarpetta Series, Book 25

By: Patricia Cornwell

Narrated by: Susan Ericksen

Length: 11 hrs and 53 mins

Publisher's summary

The legendary Patricia Cornwell is back with her number one best-selling, groundbreaking series following Kay Scarpetta.

Kay Scarpetta is back, and this time she’s right in the path of danger....

World-renowned forensic pathologist Kay Scarpetta and her husband, Benton, a psychologist with the US Secret Service, have returned to Virginia. They are headquartered five miles from the Pentagon in a post-pandemic world that’s been torn by civil and political unrest.

Just weeks into the job, Scarpetta is called to a railway track where a woman’s body has been shockingly displayed, her throat cut down to the spine. But the trail of clues will lead Scarpetta back to her own neighbourhood.

At the same time, a catastrophe occurs in a top-secret lab in outer space, endangering the scientists aboard. Scarpetta is summoned to the White House to find out what happened. As she starts the new investigation, an apparent serial killer strikes again, this time dangerously close to home.

©2021 Patricia Cornwell (P)2021 HarperCollins Publishers Limited

Critic reviews

"Astonishing...there’s no other crime writer like her." (The Times)

"Accomplished." (Financial Times)

Excellent - Until the very end.

I found this book enormously enjoyable - right up until the very last moment. The book finished so abruptly that I initially thought that there must be a second part. Everything was eventually explained in the epilogue but the conclusion really felt rushed and was a big disappointment. That said, I eagerly await the next installment.

Enter stage left...

Loved the whole Janet potential, loved Kay back in her old job, loved the whole space angle and then... enter some unknown bad guy with all the same issues. Anticlimax. But still very entertaining.