Predator: Scarpetta (Book 14)

I'm not loving the later Cornwell novels.

This Scarpetta is an improvement over the previous few in this series. However, it is still nowhere close to the books that started the series. The characters have become completely unlikeable. The plot was better than the last few but still left me a little wanting. I also did not care for the

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point of view in this one. Oh Patricia, where have you gone? I was such a fan of the first books and you just seem to have wandered off and lost your way somewhere. I read this one because it was on loan from a friend. I don't know how much longer I can keep giving this series another chance.

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A more unpleasant collection of characters you would never want to meet. It is hard to care about any of them as they have all cracked under pressure and become nasty and petty at every single opportunity.

Yes again I am hopeful that Cornwell is returning Scarpetta to someone interesting. This time the focus is on Lucy and leaves plenty of room for future exploration with her character, and she's expanded on Marino again as well. Is it just me or does Pete Marino seem to be getting younger with each

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book?

With the story line introduced here, the next couple of installments should prove to be very interesting--I hope she keeps up the great work for those!

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I am so uncomfortable with Scarpetta's arrogance and bitchiness, yet I find myself reading all the books in this series. Go figure. Good read, interesting plot, oversimplified good and evil characters.

honestly, since Postmortem, something seems a bit off in Cornwell's writing, and i don't mean merely in the literary sense. perhaps the whole case-closed thing has gone a bit to her head? the works seems defensive and on edge.

I’m not sure why I read this, other than it was around the house. With the last book, I said I wouldn’t read any more of Cornwell’s Scarpetta mysteries and yet I did. It sucked. Over Christmas, I re-read Postmortem, the first book and remembered just how great they were. Major disappointment.

Better than Trace, but still not up to her first few books in this series.

A mix of cases in Florida and in Boston leds Scarpetta and her team to search for connections.

Not at all one of her better books. It seems, unfortunately, that it's time for this series to end.

Kay Scarpetta is on the trail of a serial killer while her boyfriend is interviewing one for research purposes. The two killers path begin to come together as the story unfolds.

I really like Cornwell's novels, but I thought that this one was reaching a bit.

Typical Cornwell. With everything that happened, one was left without many answers. I still dislike her character, Lucy.

Too many things gong on, never really resolved.

I've loved the Kay Scarpetta books for years but my interest in her is waning. Lucy is getting to screwed up. Kay and Benton didn't share a single tender moment with each other. And what was the purpose of Dr. Self? The killer changed his/her mind - what is up with that?

detective & mystery stories, pathologists, scarpetta, fiction, cornwell

The Scarpetta series, like James Patterson's Alex Cross series, is one that I cannot seem to quit reading, no matter how badly I want to do so. I didn't keep track back then, but I'm pretty sure that it's been 5-6 years between reading (listening) to the previous entry, Trace, and reading

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(listening) to this one. I just couldn't make myself. And I see nothing much has changed.

Scarpetta continues to be annoyingly perfect (doctor, lawyer, excellent cook, aging backwards, apparently) but in this entry she becomes irritatingly whiny and just...angry. Benton hasn't changed much, though, as has been said, when one comes back from the dead, one can only go up from there. Marino is being written as a complete buffoon - I'm expected to believe that his unrequited love for Scarpetta has turned him into an idiot? And it doesn't help that the reader of this audio book reads him as an even bigger doofus than he's written, and I wouldn't have believed that was possible until I actually heard it.

But it's Lucy who's bearing the worst of what has to clearly be the author's self-loathing. Lucy started out as this child prodigy, the product of uncaring parents who found her way in the world with Scarpetta's and Marino's help. Now, she's just a hot mess. She hates herself, and even though Scarpetta has FINALLY come out of her own self-absorption to actually notice it, it appears she intends to remain in that state. How she can even function in the exalted position as head of the company she's created from the ground up is beyond me. Cornwell could go a long way toward redeeming this series by dialing down the pathos a notch or two hundred.

I don't know if the plot was too complex (I don't think that's it) or the fact that I was listening in the car during the holidays, such a hectic time anyway, but I found it difficult to follow at times, and had to keep going back to catch myself up. There was a plot - and I'd like to know what it is about this group of people that attracts the lunatics to them. Is it something in Scarpetta's magnificent dinners? And it was resolved, eventually, though there was a lot a exposition, in-fighting, and general buffoonery out of Marino before it was. And we dropped right off into another adventure, did we not?

I give this one star for the book, and one star for me actually getting all the way through it.

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Kay Scarpetta, her niece Lucy, her boyfriend Benton Wesley team up to investigate murders form Florida to Massachusetts. They may all be related, of course. The world is too small in Cornwell's novels. There don't seem to be any other investigators that get this case. And, one of the culprits

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always has it out for Lucy, Kay, Marino or Benton, of course. It's all too contrived. That being said the ending came on in 2 pages and left us hanging as to who did what to whom. The why was all supposition which is all unusual for a police procedural based on evidence collection. Not sure why I keep reading the Scarpetta series...

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I think she's got it back. This is pretty much back to the old Kay Scarpetta, and much more enjoyable than the last couple of books.

Kay still bothers me a bit, and Wesley totally does. And Lucy - well she's still right off the planet, but it was still an enjoyable read. Oh, and Merino? I dunno

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what's up with him, but ain't the old Marino.

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Scarpetta has a mole in her Academy, and doesn't even suspect it, she only knows that the people around her who she trusts the most are not behaving in their normal way. On top of that she is trying to sort out some very twisted murders and feels that she is being led by the nose.
I took the liberty

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of sitting and reading this all in one day. It is that kind of writing, the pace is fast, the mystery good as well as the writing. However, I probably won't read any more Cornwell books. Her stories are grittier and harder to read than I enjoy. For those who like such stories, this would be a great book.

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I enjoy reading the Kay Scarpetta series, but feel that these later books are not as thorough. The killer, HOG, who later turns out to be Helen Quincy, talks to a she-like God with an IQ of 155. When all the killers are captured, there is no mention of GOD, and I am wondering if this GOD is one of

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Helen's other personalities or if GOD is Helen's evil uncle, Adger Quincy. At times, the story seems disorganized. Plus, the evil characters too often fool Lucy, Benton, and Kay.

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pretty good book. this is an older one, but still one of the scarpetta series. it was good and i got totally tied up in as usual. this one takes place while they're still in florida which was interesting to me as well. the end seemed a little quick but it did answer all the questions. but she has

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grown as a writer since then. scarpetta stories are always a nice escape for me.

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Maybe because this was a bridged version, but I found the ending crazy -- suddenly the 'bad guy' is caught and the case is solved and you find out how all the pieces fit together as the characters recall the events instead of witnessing them unfold. Poor storytelling, I think.
This book doesn't work

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too well in audio form because there are too many POVs and the dialogues lack tags, so it was difficult to figure out what was going on at times.
Okay as a thriller/mystery, but not great on the literary front.

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In the beginning I was a little bit disappointed because it wasn't so fast-paced like the other Scarpetta's. It took me a little while to make all the links, probably because it looked like their were a lot of different cases, which weren't related so obviously. Nevertheless after the first third

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the pace took up and it was getting enthralling. Due to the fact that the main characters have got major problems with their relationships and faith in each other it kept me guessing until the very end how the outcome will be.

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