Postmortem

A serial killer is on the loose in Richmond, Virginia. Three women have died, brutalized and strangled in their own bedrooms. There is no pattern: the killer appears to strike at random - but always early on Saturday mornings. So when Dr Kay Scarpetta, chief medical examiner, is awakened at 2.33 am, she knows the news is bad: there is a fourth victim, and she fears now for those that will follow unless she can dig up new forensic evidence to aid the police. But not everyone is pleased to see a woman in this powerful job. Someone may even want to ruin her career and reputation...

Body of Evidence

Someone is stalking Beryl Madison. Someone who spies on her and makes threatening, obscene phone calls. Terrified, Beryl flees to Key West - but eventually she must return to her Richmond home. The very night she arrives, Beryl inexplicably invites her killer in. Thus begins for Dr Key Scarpetta the investigation of a crime that is as convoluted as it is bizarre. Why would Beryl open the door to someone who brutally slashed and then neatly decapitated her? Did she know her killer? Adding to the intrigue is Beryl's enigmatic relationship with a prizewinning author and the disappearance of her own manuscript. As Scarpetta retraces Beryl's footsteps, an investigation that begins in the laboratory with microscopes and lasers leads her deep into a nightmare that soon becomes her own.

All That Remains

A killer is stalking young loners. Taking their lives ... and leaning just one tantalizing clue … When the bodies of young courting couples start turning up in remote woodland areas, Dr Kay Scarpetta's task as chief medical examiner is made more difficult by the effects of the elements. Eight times she must write that the cause of death is undetermined. But when the latest girl to go missing turns out to be the daughter of one of the most powerful women in America, Kay finds herself homey to political pressure and press harassment. As she starts to investigate, she finds that vital evidence is being withheld from her - or even faked. And all the time a cunning sadistic killer is still at large...

Cruel & Unusual

At 11.05 one December evening in Richmond, Virginia, convicted murderer Ronnie Joe Waddell is pronounced dead in the electric chair. At the morgue Dr Kay Scarpetta waits for Waddell’s body. preparing to perform post mortem before the subject is dead is s strange feeling, but Scarpetta has been here before. And Waddell’s death is not the only newsworthy event on this freezing night: the grotesquely wounded body of a young boy is found propped against a rubbish skip. To Scarpetta the two cases seem unrelated, until she recalls that the body of Waddell’s victim had been arranged in a strikingly similar position. Then a third murder is discovered, the most puzzling of all. The crime scene yields very few clues: old blood stains, fragments of feather, and - most baffling - a bloody fingerprint that points to the one suspect who could not possibly have committed the murder.

The Body Farm

Black Mountain, North Carolina - a sleepy little town where the local police deal with one homicide a year, if they’re unlucky, and where people are still getting used to the idea of locking their doors at night. Hardly the place for a serial killer to be stalking, but that seems the most likely scenario when the corpse of eleven-year-old Emily Steiner is found, with a bullet wound to the head and several small sections of skin removed from her frail and abused body. The execution of the crime bears disturbing similarities to the recent murder of young Eddie Heath in Virginia, and Dr Kay Scarpetta, the Chief Medical Examiner on that case, is called in to bring her forensic skills to bear on this latest atrocity. Fighting the natural assumption that Emily’s murderer is also the man who killed Eddie, Scarpetta’s instinct for the unusual is rudely awakened when another body is found - a local cop who was working on the Steiner case but becomes a suspect himself when the missing pieces of Emily’s skin are found in hid freezer. But it’s all a little too neat for Scarpetta. The angles have to be covered, and just because the prime suspect is dead doesn’t mean the case is closed…

From Potter's Field

Christmas has never been a particularly good time for Dr Kay Scarpetta. Although a holiday for most, the festivities always seem to heighten the alienation felt by society's violent fringe; and that usually means more work for Scarpetta, Virginia's Chief Medical Examiner and consulting forensic pathologist for the FBI. The body was naked female, and found propped against a fountain in a bleak area of New York's Central Park. Her apparent manner of death points to a modus operendi that is chillingly familiar: the gunshot wound to the head the sections of skin excised from the body, the displayed corpse - all suggest that Temple Brooks Gault, Scarpetta's nemesis, is back at work. But this time Gault isn't satisfied with indiscriminate murder. As Scarpetta scrapes together the meager clues he leaves behind she realizes his actions are becoming more focused taunting almost; letting her know he's still out there, still killing. The sabotage of the FBl's database computer - a computer programmed and run by Scarpetta's niece Lucy - no longer seems coincidental, and with other insidious encroachments into her private life Scarpetta faces a terrifying truth: that this time, the price of failure could be personal. Calling on all her reserves of courage and skill, and the able assistance of colleagues Marine and Wesley, Scarpetta must track this most dangerous of killers in pursuit of survival as well as justice heading inexorably to an electrifying climax amid the dark, menacing labyrinths of the New York subway.

Cause of Death

New Year's Eve and the final murder scene of Virginia's bloodiest year takes Scarpetta thirty feet below the Elizabeth River's icy surface. A diver, Ted Eddings, is dead an investigative reporter who was a favorite at the Medical Examiner's office. Was Eddings probing the frigid depths of the Inactive Shipyard for a story, or simply diving for sunken trinkets? And why did Scarpetta receive a phone call from someone reporting the death before the police were notified? The case envelops Scarpetta, her niece Lucy, and police captain Pete Marine in a world where both cutting-edge technology and old-fashioned detective work are critical offensive weapons. Together they follow the trail of death to a well of violence as dark and forbidding as the water that swirled over Ted Eddings.

Unnatural Exposure

Dublin, Ireland and Richmond Virginia: separated by thousands of miles - linked by murder. For Dr Kay Scarpetta a lecture stint in Ireland provides the perfect opportunity to find out if the murders on both sides of the Atlantic are indeed connected. Five dismembered beheaded bodies were found in Ireland years ago - now four have been discovered in the States. But the tenth corpse in Virginia is different. There are vital discrepancies, and an indication that the elderly victim was already seriously ill. A copycat killing. Goulish, perhaps, but not unusual. And then abject terror grips Scarpetta and her colleagues when the next body is found. The circumstances of death broadcast a clear and horrifying message: the killer is armed with the most lethal weapon on earth - smallpox.

Point of Origin

Dr Kay Scarpetta, Chief Medical Examiner and consulting forensic pathologist for the federal law enforcement agency ATF, is called out to a farmhouse in Virginia which has been destroyed by fire. In the ruins of the house she finds a body which tells a story of violent and grisly murder. The fire has come at the same time as another, even more incendiary horror: Carrie Grethen, a killer who nearly destroyed the lives of Scarpetta and those closest to her, has escaped from a forensic psychiatric hospital. Her whereabouts is unknown, but her ultimate destination is not, for Carrie has begun to communicate.

Black Notice (Review)

The nightmare begins when a cargo ship arriving at Richmond's Deep Water Terminal from Belgium is discovered to be transporting a locked, sealed container holding the decomposed remains of a stowaway. The autopsy performed by Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Kay Scarpetta initially reveals neither a cause of death nor an identification. But the victim's personal effects and an odd tattoo take Scarpetta on a hunt for information that leads to INTERPOL's headquarters in Lyon, France, where she receives critical instructions: go to the Paris morgue to receive forbidden, secret evidence and then return to Virginia to carry out a mission. It is a mission that could ruin her career.

The Last Precinct

When Kay Scarpetta is mandated to investigate the four hundred-year-old violent death of one of America's first settlers at Jamestown, Virginia, it seems like the perfect match: modern technology's savviest avatar versus an age-old crime. Kay's involvement in the case attracts headlines, and more - the unwelcome ire of a person or persons unknown. Kay and those closest to her soon find themselves the targets of vicious hate crimes that are clearly inspired by her connection to the archaeological excavation. At first more nuisance than assault, the nature of the attacks quickly escalates to violence. Worse still, those sworn to protect prove to be the enemy, forcing Scarpetta, her niece Lucy, and detective Peter Marino to take matters into their own hands - torquing the rule of law and changing their lives forever.

Blow Fly

Dr. Kay Scarpetta has left Virginia in quest of peace but instead finds herself drawn into baffling, horrific murders in Florida. There she becomes entangled in an international conspiracy that confronts her with the shock of her life.

Hornet’s Nest

Violence is swarming in Charlotte, and Deputy Chief Virginia West has a mood to match. Another out-of-town businessman has been found murdered, a wise-ass detective has taken her parking slot, and her boss is telling her to go out on patrol as escort to a young reporter.

Southern Cross

Featuring the fast-moving adventures of Richmond's police department. Judy Hammer has been hired with the brief to bring sanity and order to a city in escalating chaos. Aided by her Deputy, Virginia West, and Andy Brazil, now a full-time police officer, she faces the most difficult assignment of her career. Not only do the established police force resent their presence, the city's institutions have over-high expectations of the new team. Their work to eradicate teenage gangs, prevent the robberies from cash dispensers and the in-fighting inside the department comes to a shuddering halt when a virus invades the police computer system. Their screens are frozen into an image of blue fish. The same blue fish also appears on the statue of Jefferson Davis which dominates the city's cemetery. The once-proud statue has been transformed by graffiti into a black basketball player with the number 12 on his jersey. A gang called the Pikes claim it is their symbol - the same gang who are probably involved the robberies taking place all over the city.

Isle of Dogs

Chaos breaks loose when the governor of Virginia orders that speed traps be painted on all streets and highways, warning that speeders will be caught by monitoring aircraft flying overhead. But the eccentric Isle of Tangier, fourteen miles off the coast of Virginia in the Chesapeake Bay, responds by declaring war on its own state. Judy Hammer, newly installed as the superintendent of the Virginia State Police, and Andy Brazil, a state trooper and Hammer's right hand and confidant, find themselves at their wits' end as they try to protect the public from the politicians-and vice versa-in this pitch-perfect, darkly comic romp.

Potrait of a Killer - Jack the Ripper Case Closed

In this headline-making new work of nonfiction, Cornwell turns her trademark skills for meticulous research and scientific expertise on one of the most chilling cases of serial murder in the history of crime-the slayings of Jack the Ripper that terrorized 1880s London. With the masterful intuition into the criminal mind that has informed her novels, Cornwell digs deeper into the case than any detective before her-and reveals the true identity of this elusive madman. Enlisting the help of forensic experts, Cornwell examines all the physical evidence available: thousands of documents and reports, fingerprints, crime-scene photographs, original etchings and paintings, items of clothing, artists' paraphernalia, and traces of DNA. Her unavoidable conclusion: Jack the Ripper was none other than a respected painter of his day, an artist now collected by some of the world's finest museums.