Book review: Kay Scarpetta is back in top-notch forensic thriller

"Autopsy"

Author: Patricia Cornwell

William Morrow, 398 pages, $28.99

Award-winning, best-selling author Patricia Cornwell has gifted us with “Autopsy,” a new Kay Scarpetta forensic thriller — the 25th book in this series. And right from the jump Cornwell throws her beloved character into the deep end.

Scarpetta is back in Virginia, having recently accepted the position of chief medical examiner for the commonwealth. As the story starts, she’s second-guessing her decision to accept the job. She was hired to clean up the negligence and probable corruption of her predecessor, one Dr. Elvin Reddy. Thanks to smooth political chicanery, he’s just been appointed the new health commissioner for Virginia. That makes him her boss. Scarpetta has known and distrusted this man for years. She’s also inherited Reddy’s 27-year secretary, Maggie, who is high-handed, a Reddy loyalist, and no fan of Scarpetta.

Before she can tackle that issue and finish unpacking her home in Old Town Alexandria, she’s called to a grisly murder scene. A young woman has been found near railroad tracks with her throat cut down to her spine and hands severed at the wrists.

When the victim is identified, the trail leads back to a house in Old Town two doors down from the residence of her sister Dorothy and brother-in-law Pete. Turns out, Dorothy had asked Pete and her daughter Lucy, both security experts, to do an audit for this neighbor because she feared a violent old boyfriend. Scarpetta finds herself in the middle of a high-profile case in which her family are entangled.

That’s the tip of the iceberg as the case unfolds into a potential national security issue and her husband, Benton Wesley, a forensic specialist for the Secret Service, becomes involved. While Scarpetta is trying to unravel this complicated case and get her feet firmly planted on the ground in her new job, she and her husband are called to an urgent meeting at the White House with all the heavy-hitters, including the president. What follows are nail-biting transmissions from space played out across several giant screens.

There has been a catastrophe at top-secret orbiting laboratory. After reporting his fellow crew members as missing, one member of a three-person team has departed in a Soyuz spacecraft and landed in Kazakhstan. A search-and-rescue craft is en route to the site. Over several harrowing hours, the situation develops into the first crime scene in space, testing Scarpetta’s nerves and expertise.

The action in “Autopsy” is propulsive and the tension is sustained to the last page of the book. Dr. Kay Scarpetta is back and with her is a cast of well-drawn characters and intersecting plot lines. Author Cornwell confidently steers the story from a deep, first-person perspective that draws the reader in and never lets go. Thriller lovers and Cornwell’s many fans will enjoy riding along with Scarpetta as she navigates dark waters on a personal and professional level, on Earth and in space.

Jacksonville author Claudia N. Oltean is currently completing a two-book historical fiction series set during Prohibition/The Roaring ’20s. Reach her at www.oltean.com.

This article originally appeared on Florida Times-Union: Book review: 'Autopsy' by Patricia Cornwell