Book of the Dead
Ratings10
Average rating3.4
15
Ratings10
Average rating3.4
Dr. Kay Scarpetta is starting over with a unique private forensic pathology practice in Charleston, South Carolina. But in this thrilling #1 New York Times bestseller, her fresh start ushers in a string of murders more baffling—and terrifying—than any that have come before... The Book of the Dead is the morgue log, the ledger in which all cases are entered by hand. For Kay Scarpetta, however, it is about to acquire a new meaning. A sixteen-year-old tennis star, fresh from a tournament win Charleston, is found nude and mutilated near Piazza Navona in Rome. The body of an abused young boy is dumped in a desolate marsh. A woman is ritualistically murdered in her multimillion-dollar beach home. Meanwhile, in New England, problems with a prominent patient at a Harvard-affiliated psychiatric hospital begin to hint at interconnections among the deaths that are as hard to imagine as they are horrible. Scarpetta has dealt with many brutal and unusual crimes before, but never has she seen a string of death like what she's facing now. Before she is through, that book of the dead will contain many names—and the pen may be poised to write her own...
Series
25 primary booksKay Scarpetta is a 25-book series with 25 primary works first released in 1990 with contributions by Patricia Cornwell and Patricia Daniels Cornwell.
Reviews with the most likes.
So, I'm not familiar with Cornwell's Scarpetta series, so maybe that biases me. (Though novels should stand on their own merits.) The plot was terrible - convoluted and contrived. There were so many coincidences I stopped caring. Sometimes you can pull off a “master plot” with lots of “coincidences” that end up being part of the plan all along, but this was just sloppy and overwrought. I didn't care about any of the characters, and identified the most with a minor character that took up all of ten pages. It was dull and bland and I'm sorry I actually finished it.
This was actually the first in the series I had read and I truly enjoyed it. It was the first time I had read something like this and therefore surprised myself with how much I did like the story. Naturally, I then had to go back and start getting the rest. Unfortunately, I have only read it once and the only thing I remember is that I enjoyed it.
