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Title: Cruel and Unusual by Patricia Daniels Cornwell, Lorelei King ISBN: 0-7451-4358-X Publisher: Chivers Audio Books Pub. Date: February, 1996 Format: Audio Cassette Volumes: 10 List Price(USD): $84.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.26 (68 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Not as Gruesome as the Last One.
Comment: This book opens with the execution of rapist/murderer Ronnie Joe Waddell and the following autopsy. Not long after murder victims start showing up around Richmond that look like they were committed by Waddell. How can that be? He's dead. Then his prints show up at a crime scene and to top it off, Kay's assistant in murdered and the press blames Kay.
As usual PC carries over characters from her previous novels that we've come to know. Any second we expect cop buddy Pete Marino to drop dead from his excesses and niece Lucy is still annoying (to me anyway). Thankfully, the descriptions of the murders and the autopsies don't seem as gruesome as the last one ("All that Remains) and like the last one, this thriller gets five stars, because I just couldn't put it down.
Reviewed by Vesta Irene
Rating: 4
Summary: Interesting book to read during the holidays!
Comment: This is only the second of the author's "Kay Scarpetta" novels that I've read, and I wasn't all that impressed with _Postmortem,_ so I approached this fourth book in the series with some scepticism, even though It seems to be one of the best reviewed. After a decade of appeals, Ronnie Joe Waddell is finally being executed and Scarpetta waits to perform the autopsy (though I'm not clear why that should be necessary). But that same evening, a young boy is ritually murdered in a manner very reminiscent of Waddell's style. That's followed by another murder -- and Waddell's fingerprints apparently are found on the scene. Was someone else executed in his place? The authorities involved, of course, don't even want to *think* about such an appalling possibility. More murders follow, including Scarpetta's own Morgue Attendant, and suddenly links seem to be turning up to tie the Chief Medical Examiner to the killings, as well as to corruption in her own office. All the action takes place in the few weeks preceding and following the Christmas-New Year's holidays, and the gray, cold winter adds greatly to the flavor of the narration.
There's no question that this one is an improvement over the first one I read. Cornwell doesn't bring in a completely new character in the last chapter to be the villain, for one thing. And she has added considerable depth to the personalities of all the repeating characters, especially Lt. Pete Marino of Richmond Homicide and FBI Special Agent Benton Wesley. My favorite, though, is Lucy, Scarpetta's niece from Miami, who possesses what another character calls a "frightening intellect." But she's still seventeen years old, and her home life is, in many ways, not a happy one. Aunt Kay really does try to be the friend and confident to Lucy that she would like to be, but she has her own emotional problems -- not least among them the death of her lover in an IRA bombing in London less than a year before -- and her naturally reserved and somewhat stony personality is sometimes her own worst liability.
There are problems, though. Cornwell has a rather pompous style, especially when she's describing the latest crime-fighting technological advances, or the ins and outs of UNIX. It's as if she enjoys saying "I know more about this than you do." She also indulges in irritating word-choices, such as not knowing the difference between "in" and "inside" (e.g., "I put my revolver inside my purse"), and she seems to be unaware of the use of contractions in ordinary speech. Still, the well thought out plot and the complications in possible motives and interpretations kept me reading. Many fans and reviewers take it as a given that Cornwell is the "best" mystery writer working, which I can't agree with at all. But she's not bad.
Rating: 4
Summary: Great page turner
Comment: I really liked this book. It is a page turner for sure. I would read before I went to bed and have to force myself to find a stopping point. If the ending was written differently I would have given it 5 stars, but it was still fun to read.
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Title: All That Remains by Patricia D. Cornwell ISBN: 0380718332 Publisher: Avon Pub. Date: 01 July, 1993 List Price(USD): $7.99 |
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Title: The Body Farm by Patricia Daniels Cornwell ISBN: 0425147622 Publisher: Berkley Pub Group Pub. Date: September, 1995 List Price(USD): $7.99 |
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Title: Body of Evidence by Patricia Cornwell ISBN: 0671038567 Publisher: Pocket Books Pub. Date: 01 May, 1999 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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Title: Postmortem by Patricia Cornwell ISBN: 0671023616 Publisher: Pocket Books Pub. Date: 01 April, 1998 List Price(USD): $7.99 |
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