About the Author

Patricia Cornwell is one of the world's major international best-selling authors, translated into thirty-six languages across more than fifty countries. She is a founder of the Virginia Institute of Forensic Science and Medicine, a founding member of the National Forensic Academy, a member of the New York OCME Forensic Sciences Training Program's Advisory Board, and a member of the Harvard-affiliated McLean Hospital's National Council, where she is an advocate for psychiatric research. In 2008 Cornwell won the Galaxy British Book Awards' Books Direct Crime Thriller of the Year - the first American ever to win this prestigious award. Her most recent bestsellers include Scarpetta, Book of the Dead and The Front. Her earlier works include Postmortem - the only novel to win five major crime awards in a single year - and Cruel and Unusual, which won the coveted Gold Dagger award in 1993. Dr. Kay Scarpetta herself won the 1999 Sherlock Award for the best detective created by an American writer.

Reviews

Classic Cornwell territory with...a sharp political element that will ensure the book isn't on George Bush's bedside table - Daily ExpressServing up an Ace....Cornwell is firmly back on the money here. - Daily MirrorPatricia Cornwell is the queen of gritty, grisly, crime fiction writing and her latest offering doesn't disappoint. Book of the Dead will keep you gripped throughout - Heat''The reason we read novels about the forensic investigation of crime is not artistic decorum but a fascination with how things work. This is what Cornwell has always provided, and it is an area in which she does not disappoint.'' Times Literary Supplement - ?Hannibal Lecter, eat your liver out. Tersely written, elaborately plotted and crammed with research, Cornwell?s writing has always been hard-boiled

Classic Cornwell territory with...a sharp political element that will ensure the book isn't on George Bush's bedside table - Daily ExpressServing up an Ace....Cornwell is firmly back on the money here. - Daily MirrorPatricia Cornwell is the queen of gritty, grisly, crime fiction writing and her latest offering doesn't disappoint. Book of the Dead will keep you gripped throughout - Heat''The reason we read novels about the forensic investigation of crime is not artistic decorum but a fascination with how things work. This is what Cornwell has always provided, and it is an area in which she does not disappoint.'' Times Literary Supplement - ?Hannibal Lecter, eat your liver out. Tersely written, elaborately plotted and crammed with research, Cornwell?s writing has always been hard-boiled

Bestseller Cornwell's 15th novel to feature Dr. Kay Scarpetta (after 2005's Predator) delivers her trademark grisly crime scenes, but lacks the coherence and emotional resonance of earlier books. Soon after relocating to Charleston, S.C., to launch a private forensics lab, Scarpetta is asked to consult on the murder of U.S. tennis star Drew Martin, whose mutilated body was found in Rome. Contradictory evidence leaves Scarpetta, the Italian carabinieri and Scarpetta's lover, forensic psychologist Benton Wesley, stumped. But when she discovers unsettling connections between Martin's murder, the body of an unidentified South Carolina boy and her old nemesis, the maniacal psychiatrist Dr. Marilyn Self, Scarpetta encounters a killer as deadly as any she's ever faced. With her recent switch from first- to third-person narration, Cornwell loses what once made her series so compelling: a window into the mind of a strong, intelligent woman holding her own in a profession dominated by men. Here, the abrupt shifts in point of view slow the momentum, and the reader flounders in excessive forensic minutiae. (Oct.) Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information.