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Title: Point of Origin by Patricia Daniels Cornwell ISBN: 0-425-16986-3 Publisher: Berkley Pub Group Pub. Date: August, 1999 Format: Mass Market Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $7.99 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.25 (459 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: Classic Cornwell!
Comment: I read a lot of the reviews for this book, and I really don't agree with most of them. I think that this book is an extremely good example of Ms. Cornwell's chilling writing. The dialogue and the plot are crisp and the detail is incredible. We find out a lot about fire investigation in this book. Yes, I admit Ms. Cornwell does get rather graphic and "over-the-top" in her violence, but that is what makes a Kay Scarpetta book so Unputdownable. I do agree with others, that readers must read this series in order. A lot of what happens in each book is a take off from what happened in a previous one. It would be confusing if you started partway through. Also, the character development progesses with each book, so the reader needs to get inside Kay's head and see things in the way she would have. In this book, we see a previous villain come back to haunt Kay and the people that she loves. Kay is called in to a fire investigation where a body is found burned beyond recognition. The more she digs into the case, the more disturbed she becomes and she realizes that she is dealing with true monster who probably had committed many murders before this one. Also, the more she digs, the more it becomes apparent that an old nemesis (Carrie Grethen) is somehow behind these terrible crimes. Her, Benton, Lucy and Marino set out to find a killer and one of the truly evil people that she has ever encountered. Before the final twist of the plot at the end, Kay suffers a very personal tragedy. We will have to read how that has affected her in the next installment.
Rating: 4
Summary: It was good, even for a 'bad' book by her
Comment: I don't consider myself a big fan of hers, though given this I sure have read enough of her books. The are well written, well researched, great plots. I don't even mind that all her female characters are all superstars (a lot of women are superstars ). The negative for me was the whining, the doctor and her neice are big whiners. I will read another book by her.
Rating: 4
Summary: I kept up the page turning...
Comment: Like many popular novels, this one is an easy and fairly quick read despite the fact that Cornwell often gives way too much detail and information in places. Near the beginning of this work she introduces a manager at a local motel that has red hair and a cat named "Pickles". She tells us why the cat is named Pickles, and if I could ask her, I'd wonder why she bothered. Somebody apparently likes Vidalia onions too, so what? I think some of the attention to detail, like what's for dinner and what color a meaningless characters shirt is, could have been left out.
Cornwell does a good job of back story and I was surprised to find that a character from 'All That Remains', the only other novel of hers I've read, had died off in one of the previous books. By the end of this one, I decided that there was a plot line that Cornwell doesn't seem to escape from; Scarpetta is a bit of a loner and lots of her friends die including one in the the book I just mentioned. I suppose it propels readers into the next book, who will die next? But I find it too contrived. I never liked the premise of that tv show 'Murder She Wrote' either, how many people have someone around them get murdered all the time?
In 'All That Remains' we have too many coincidences. Perhaps that is often how crimes are solved, through lucky breaks and the like, but here it was too much. And I really didn't care for the ending, it was too sudden and didn't have much suspense. It seemed like she decided it was time to end the book, so the killers just showed up and started shooting.
Another complaint I have is simply that she leaves some issues unresolved. In the beginning of the novel, there is a black foal that has mysteriously escaped death and we are lead to believe this is some kind of foreshadowing, but it never gets resolved. Also the character that seems to be important at the beginning, the big-wig rich guy, ends up being almost meaningless, even though we are lead to believe he has some importance.
A huge issue in trying to solve the crime, how the fires started and how they get so big, gets tons of play, but we never get told what actually happened. This was the biggest error of the book, I felt, there was all this drama building up about how they couldn't figure out how the fires got started and then we are never told what actually happened. One of the problems of writing from only one viewpoint, in the first person, is that it is sometimes awkward to describe events that the protagonist doesn't know about first hand. I'd give Cornwell an "A" for how she handles this technique, but to leave out something so important seems unforgivable. She does explain how the fire starts, but it is akin to saying they "used a match" she left out how they got so hot when that question was a huge story point to the fire detectives.
And of course the characterization of Lucy was too much. If Cornwell wants to write about a computer genius, beautiful and perfect, able to do calculations in her head that everyone else needs a calculator for, able to fly helicopters, be a fire investigator, FBI agent, and so forth, perhaps she should make her the protagonist as she is almost like a female James Bond and she shouldn't be playing second fiddle.
Despite my complaints, being picky and looking for faults is a character trait of mine, I'm still going to give this book a 4. In the field that it is written in, it is above average. I'd recommend, however, starting in the beginning of the series, unlike myself, as I think that would make the stories run together more smoothly. I'd also point out that this type of writing probably appeals more to female readers, but I'd venture to say I'll read more, they are certainly entertaining.
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Title: Unnatural Exposure by Patricia Daniels Cornwell ISBN: 0425163407 Publisher: Berkley Pub Group Pub. Date: July, 1998 List Price(USD): $7.99 |
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Title: Cause of Death by Patricia Daniels Cornwell, Marx ISBN: 0425158616 Publisher: Berkley Pub Group Pub. Date: September, 1997 List Price(USD): $7.99 |
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Title: Black Notice by Patricia Daniels Cornwell ISBN: 0425175405 Publisher: Berkley Pub Group Pub. Date: 01 August, 2000 List Price(USD): $7.99 |
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Title: The Last Precinct by Patricia Cornwell ISBN: 0425180638 Publisher: Berkley Pub Group Pub. Date: 03 July, 2001 List Price(USD): $7.99 |
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Title: From Potter's Field by Patricia Daniels Cornwell, Don Peppers ISBN: 0425154092 Publisher: Berkley Pub Group Pub. Date: August, 1996 List Price(USD): $7.99 |
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