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

Once again narrator is bland!

Story is good, at times toooooo descriptive. Narrator is bland, no emotion, or excitement…. Like she’s reading a boring story In another language to aliens!!

Nice relaxing & holds your attention

I like when she does more dialogue between the key characters. This was a good storyline and kept my attention. Thanks!

Great Read!

Another great story by Patricia Cornwall. Very difficult to put down once you start. The only reason not giving 5 stars is because I felt there were a couple of spots in the book that needed more clarification of the situation and a couple of spots that needed less. I love Kate Reading's narration. The voices she gives the characters are spot on with the way I imagined they would sound! Another narrator completely ruined Lucy and Moreno's characters for me. Lucy was too bubbly and Moreno was too civilized. Please bring back Kate for all narrations of future books!

I had a hard time with this one

Would you say that listening to this book was time well-spent? Why or why not?

I have read all of the Scarpetta books, which makes me want to see the series to the end, but I think the end better come soon. I am beginning to dislike all of the man characters and this makes me sad. I used to love the chemisty with Scarpetta and Marino, admire Lucy and romanticize Benton. I do not any longer. Scarpetta, is a self important know it all, Lucy is a bitch who is nasty Marino lost his balls and Benton sounds like an old man.

What was your reaction to the ending? (No spoilers please!)

Ending had zero excitement.

What didn’t you like about Kate Reading’s performance?

I did not. Her voice began to irritate me. She read oddly, ending sentences with questions and over annunciating words. I found I could not contentrate on her voice for very long. I struggled to finish this book because of it.

If this book were a movie would you go see it?

Not if it had the same pace as this book.

Never disappointed

I have been reading and listening to PC books for years. Never have I been dissatisfied by her capacity to fill in all the clues needed to put it all together. Yet, she still manages to stump me.
I love not knowing who did it, way before the end of the story, she gets me every time.
She is a superior writer with just the right narrator.

Great book

Great story by the best author on the planet, I highly recommend all Patricia Cornwell books. She is by far the best author I have had the privilege to meet on person

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.

The...most...annoying...narrator...ever...

Same old story. Everyone is either in love with Scarpetta or out to get her. I mean, really? But the worst part of this audiobook is the narrator. She absolutely ruins the book. She
sounds like a robot...a bored robot, if that's possible. She has to e-nun-ci-ate e-ve-ry syl-la-ble. Total snooze-fest!!