Black Notice (Kay Scarpetta) - Softcover

Cornwell, Patricia

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0425175405 ISBN 13: 9780425175408

Publisher: Penguin, 2000

Synopsis

The discovery of the decomposed body of a stowaway aboard a cargo ship arriving in Richmond from Belgium leads Chief Medical Examiner Kay Scarpetta on a perilous international odyssey from Virginia to Paris on a mission that could destroy her career and threatens her own life and the lives of everyone she loves. Reprint.

About this title

Review

The postmortem is in--Black Notice, the 10th in Patricia Cornwell's Scarpetta series--is a gore- splattered, intensely exciting read.

As winter grips Richmond, Virginia, an air of sombreness pervades chief medical examiner Kay Scarpetta's world. Her beloved niece Lucy is involved in a dangerous undercover police operation in Miami, and auntie fears for her life. A tyrannical new deputy chief, Diane Bray, wants to get Kay's department under her jurisdiction. Meanwhile, back at the office, someone has tinkered with the e-mail system, stealing Kay's identity and sending off slanderous and hurtful messages. Emotionally battered, Scarpetta fears she is going insane. Or, could it be that someone is deliberately sowing this harvest of sorrow?

Despite her personal problems, Scarpetta is still the reigning diva at the department of death. She is sent to investigate the purified remains of a man found inside a container ship, "eyes bulged froglike, and the scalp and beard were sloughing off with the outer layer of darkening skin." Kay finds strange, animal-like hairs on the man's clothing--the same hairs that she discovers on a murdered store clerk a few days later. In actuality, the bizarre killings extend well beyond Virginia; whoever killed the Richmond victims also butchered people in France. Kay and police captain Pete Marino are whisked off to Paris where they must collect top-secret information from a Paris morgue, and avoid becoming victims themselves.

This macabre tome is the stuff that classic Scarpetta tales are made of: creepy but compulsive autopsy scenes, plentiful plot twists and the compelling, if slightly more vulnerable, chief medical examiner herself. --Naomi Gesinger

Review

'Cornwell's books run on high octane fuel, a cocktail of adrenalin and fear. Black Notice is no exception.' (The Times)

'Black Notice is undoubtedly her best book for some time: not only because of some excellent scalpel work, but mainly because it is not so much about crime as about Scarpetta.' (Evening Standard)

'Imitators now abound, but – pathologically speaking – nobody does it like Cornwell.' (Literary Review)

About this edition

• Publisher: Penguin
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0425175405
• ISBN 13: 9780425175408
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 464