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Available
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Library's review
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Fundet til 5 kr i Blå Kors. Stadig ikke noget godt køb.
Fundet til 5 kr i Blå Kors. Stadig ikke noget godt køb.
Genres
Publication
London HarperCollinsPublishers 2017
Description
"#1 New York Times bestselling author Patricia Cornwell returns with the remarkable twenty-fourth thriller in her popular high-stakes series starring medical examiner Dr. Kay Scarpetta. In the quiet of twilight, on an early autumn day, twenty-six-year-old Elisa Vandersteel is killed while riding her bicycle along the Charles River. It appears she was struck by lightning--except the weather is perfectly clear with not a cloud in sight. Dr. Kay Scarpetta, the Cambridge Forensic Center's director and chief, decides at the scene that this is no accidental Act of God. Her investigation becomes complicated when she begins receiving a flurry of bizarre poems from an anonymous cyberbully who calls himself Tailend Charlie. Though subsequent lab results support Scarpetta's conclusions, the threatening messages don't stop. When the tenth poem arrives exactly twenty-four hours after Elisa's death, Scarpetta begins to suspect the harasser is involved, and sounds the alarm to her investigative partner Pete Marino and her husband, FBI analyst Benton Wesley. She also enlists the help of her niece, Lucy. But to Scarpetta's surprise, tracking the slippery Tailend Charlie is nearly impossible, even for someone as brilliant as her niece. Also, Lucy can't explain how this anonymous nemesis could have access to private information. To make matters worse, a venomous media is whipping the public into a frenzy, questioning the seasoned forensics chief's judgment and "a quack cause of death on a par with spontaneous combustion.""-- "#1 New York Times bestselling author Patricia Cornwell delivers the twenty-fourth thriller in her high-stakes series starring medical examiner Dr. Kay Scarpetta"--… (more)
User reviews
LibraryThing member nbmars
This is the 24th book in the crime fiction series featuring forensic pathologist Kay Scarpetta, who now is the head of the Cambridge Forensic Center in Massachusetts.
As the story opens on a suffocatingly hot day in early September, Kay and Police Investigator Pete Marino are called to the scene
Kay has gotten her share of prank calls lately as well. These threatening calls come from someone identifying himself as “Tailend Charlie.” The voice on the calls has been manufactured to sound like Kay’s deceased father, and the messages are delivered in Italian, always at 6:12, which is Kay’s date of birth. Moreover, they always last 22.4 seconds; 224 was the street address where Kay grew up.
Kay and Marino discuss the current death, the calls by Tailend Charlie, and the upcoming visit of Kay’s sister Dorothy in confusing and chaotic dialogue, although this is probably not the “chaos” to which the title refers. When Kay’s FBI husband Benton Wesley enters the picture, the dialogue does not become more comprehensible. Clarity is not the strong point of this book.
As Kay and Marino analyze the crime scene, they discover that Vandersteel was a victim of some sort of electrocution, in a way similar to other recent puzzling deaths. In spite of some badly done red herrings, Kay, Marino, and Benton - for inexplicable reasons - suspect involvement of the pathological Carrie Grethen, nemesis of Kay and her niece Lucy.
The story builds to a predictable climax, and ends with a surprising revelation that ensures the storyline will continue in future books.
Evaluation: The plot is a bit silly and the dialogue is hopelessly garbled. Except for the interesting forensic details, the book was a great disappointment to me.
As the story opens on a suffocatingly hot day in early September, Kay and Police Investigator Pete Marino are called to the scene
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after 23-year-old cyclist Elisa Vandersteel is found dead in John F. Kennedy Park. Marino got a call about the case allegedly from Interpol, although it’s glaringly and annoyingly obvious to everyone but Marino and even Kay for a while that it was a fake call.Kay has gotten her share of prank calls lately as well. These threatening calls come from someone identifying himself as “Tailend Charlie.” The voice on the calls has been manufactured to sound like Kay’s deceased father, and the messages are delivered in Italian, always at 6:12, which is Kay’s date of birth. Moreover, they always last 22.4 seconds; 224 was the street address where Kay grew up.
Kay and Marino discuss the current death, the calls by Tailend Charlie, and the upcoming visit of Kay’s sister Dorothy in confusing and chaotic dialogue, although this is probably not the “chaos” to which the title refers. When Kay’s FBI husband Benton Wesley enters the picture, the dialogue does not become more comprehensible. Clarity is not the strong point of this book.
As Kay and Marino analyze the crime scene, they discover that Vandersteel was a victim of some sort of electrocution, in a way similar to other recent puzzling deaths. In spite of some badly done red herrings, Kay, Marino, and Benton - for inexplicable reasons - suspect involvement of the pathological Carrie Grethen, nemesis of Kay and her niece Lucy.
The story builds to a predictable climax, and ends with a surprising revelation that ensures the storyline will continue in future books.
Evaluation: The plot is a bit silly and the dialogue is hopelessly garbled. Except for the interesting forensic details, the book was a great disappointment to me.
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LibraryThing member SydneySpaniel
The author took forever to get to the story and continually went off on tangents that had no bearing on the story, character development or anything besides being boring
LibraryThing member buffalogr
The latest Scarpetta novel, ti's about a murder of a bicycle rider in Boston, then it spins out of control. This is chaotic, indeed, and needs some serious work to turn it into anything near an exciting read. There’s very little plot and lots of rambling so that we don’t have a dead body till
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20% through the book. There's al awful lot of discussion about slimey shoes, internal monologue and other clothing concerns that detract from the whodunit plot. Show Less
LibraryThing member dickmanikowski
I find myself in an ambivalent relationship with Ms Cornwell's Kay Scarpetta suspense novels. This one tended more toward the hate end of the spectrum. "Why am I still reading this book that isn't going anywhere,' I asked myself as I kept turning the pages.
LibraryThing member CatherineBurkeHines
I never learn. At 17%, nothing has happened. Nothing. And not in an interesting way, either. How was this even published? A waste.
ETA: At 80% complete, the elapsed time within the book was about three hours, and the exposition felt endless. Endless. At 90% complete, all hell broke loose, and the
ETA: At 80% complete, the elapsed time within the book was about three hours, and the exposition felt endless. Endless. At 90% complete, all hell broke loose, and the
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villains were identified and disposed of within a couple of paragraphs. I just don't get it. Show Less
LibraryThing member Andy_DiMartino
Somewhat disappointed again.
LibraryThing member IonaS
This is another absorbing thriller by Patricia Cornwell.
It is seen from the viewpoint of Dr Kay Scarpetta, forensic pathologist.
The death Scarpetta is investigating takes place on a fitness path in a public park in Cambridge, Massachusetts in a very hot summer.
Also involved are Kay’s husband,
There is Lucy, who is a computer genius and an accomplished helicoptor pilot; she aids Kay in the investigation. She is a former FBI agent who spent years undercover.
Lucy is the gifted daughter of Dorothy, Kay’s sister, who is not a particularly pleasant person. Lucy’s partner is Janet and they have an adopted nine-year-old son, Desi.
A young woman dies inexplicably while riding her bicycle through the park. Strangely enough, Kay encounters the woman twice and even talks to her a little before the incident occurs.
It is hard to see whether the woman dies by accident or whether she has been deliberately killed.
The woman’s name is Elisa Vandersteel, 23 years-old, from London. It affects Kay strongly that she encountered her before the incident since she wonders whether the could have said or done something to save her. Of course she had no idea that anything was going to happen to her.
Someone calls in and reports an altercation between Kay and her chief of staff, Bryce. This is strange and they wonder who it was that called in.
Also Marino receives a phone call from someone claiming to be an Interpol investigator, but is he really? When Marino calls back, it turns out the call was actually from a Washington hotel.
There are two fourteen-year old girls at the scene, identical twins, one in pink one in yellow.There is something not quite right about them. It seems strange that such young children are out at night alone.
It was they who found the body.
The body was ten foot from the bicycle and the girl’s helmet is far from where the bicycle went down.
A lamp post near the body had been smashed and the glass blown all over the place.
Kay’s sister, Dorothy, is on her way to visit Kay, though she isn’t usually keen to do so.
Kay is worried that Dorothy and Marino are having an affair.
The wife of Kay’s friend, the head of U.S. Medical Intelligence, General John Briggs, has been trying to reach Kay.
It is beginning to appear that the “monstrous psychopath” Carrie Grethen, whom we know from previous books, may possibly be involved in the case they’re investigating.
Kay was “physically mauled” by Carrie Grethen and almost died.
There is a negative character called Tailend Charlie sending Kay and Lucy communications, all sent at si-twelve P.M.
Six-twelve was also the time of the 911 call complaining about Kay fighting with Bryce.
Tailend Charlie mentioned the name “SisterTwister”, a name Kay gave to her unpleasant sister when they were children. How did he know of this name?
Lucy thinks Tailend Charlie is Carrie Grethen, while it could be a new assistant of hers. Carrie is definitely not working alone.
Carrie had been locked up in a forensic facility for the criminally insane but then escaped and it was thought that she had been killed. But, sadly no.
Carrie had been spying on Natalie, Lucy’s first partner, who died of cancer in a hospice.
Lucy says Carrie is an addict, addicted to them.
Kay is getting canned recordings using the voice of her deceased father, which is unsettling. Kay’s father’s voice had never been recorded, as far as she knew, and he died before Carrie was born.
Lucy feel they’re “sort of screwed”.
Lucy knows all about computer technology, but apparently Carrie knows just as much.
Carrie’s eyes are eerily blue. Her mother was a deranged religious freak, “pathologically jealous with a plethora of personality disorders and delusional ideations”.
Carrie’s superior mental discipline and ability to dissociate have made her a “supremely successful psychopath.”
There is surprise, rather shocking, information about Desi, Lucy and Janet’s adopted son, at the end of the book. I can’t reveal what this is of course, but I'm sure there will be more about it in a later book.
It is seen from the viewpoint of Dr Kay Scarpetta, forensic pathologist.
The death Scarpetta is investigating takes place on a fitness path in a public park in Cambridge, Massachusetts in a very hot summer.
Also involved are Kay’s husband,
Show More
Benton, who is a forensic psychologist, and Police Investigator, Pete Marino, whom we also know from previous books. There is Lucy, who is a computer genius and an accomplished helicoptor pilot; she aids Kay in the investigation. She is a former FBI agent who spent years undercover.
Lucy is the gifted daughter of Dorothy, Kay’s sister, who is not a particularly pleasant person. Lucy’s partner is Janet and they have an adopted nine-year-old son, Desi.
A young woman dies inexplicably while riding her bicycle through the park. Strangely enough, Kay encounters the woman twice and even talks to her a little before the incident occurs.
It is hard to see whether the woman dies by accident or whether she has been deliberately killed.
The woman’s name is Elisa Vandersteel, 23 years-old, from London. It affects Kay strongly that she encountered her before the incident since she wonders whether the could have said or done something to save her. Of course she had no idea that anything was going to happen to her.
Someone calls in and reports an altercation between Kay and her chief of staff, Bryce. This is strange and they wonder who it was that called in.
Also Marino receives a phone call from someone claiming to be an Interpol investigator, but is he really? When Marino calls back, it turns out the call was actually from a Washington hotel.
There are two fourteen-year old girls at the scene, identical twins, one in pink one in yellow.There is something not quite right about them. It seems strange that such young children are out at night alone.
It was they who found the body.
The body was ten foot from the bicycle and the girl’s helmet is far from where the bicycle went down.
A lamp post near the body had been smashed and the glass blown all over the place.
Kay’s sister, Dorothy, is on her way to visit Kay, though she isn’t usually keen to do so.
Kay is worried that Dorothy and Marino are having an affair.
The wife of Kay’s friend, the head of U.S. Medical Intelligence, General John Briggs, has been trying to reach Kay.
It is beginning to appear that the “monstrous psychopath” Carrie Grethen, whom we know from previous books, may possibly be involved in the case they’re investigating.
Kay was “physically mauled” by Carrie Grethen and almost died.
There is a negative character called Tailend Charlie sending Kay and Lucy communications, all sent at si-twelve P.M.
Six-twelve was also the time of the 911 call complaining about Kay fighting with Bryce.
Tailend Charlie mentioned the name “SisterTwister”, a name Kay gave to her unpleasant sister when they were children. How did he know of this name?
Lucy thinks Tailend Charlie is Carrie Grethen, while it could be a new assistant of hers. Carrie is definitely not working alone.
Carrie had been locked up in a forensic facility for the criminally insane but then escaped and it was thought that she had been killed. But, sadly no.
Carrie had been spying on Natalie, Lucy’s first partner, who died of cancer in a hospice.
Lucy says Carrie is an addict, addicted to them.
Kay is getting canned recordings using the voice of her deceased father, which is unsettling. Kay’s father’s voice had never been recorded, as far as she knew, and he died before Carrie was born.
Lucy feel they’re “sort of screwed”.
Lucy knows all about computer technology, but apparently Carrie knows just as much.
Carrie’s eyes are eerily blue. Her mother was a deranged religious freak, “pathologically jealous with a plethora of personality disorders and delusional ideations”.
Carrie’s superior mental discipline and ability to dissociate have made her a “supremely successful psychopath.”
There is surprise, rather shocking, information about Desi, Lucy and Janet’s adopted son, at the end of the book. I can’t reveal what this is of course, but I'm sure there will be more about it in a later book.
Show Less
Language
Original language
English
Physical description
421 p.; 17.6 cm
ISBN
9780008150679
Local notes
Omslag: HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
Omslagsfoto: Elly De Vries / Arcangel Images
Omslaget viser en øde lille vejbro
Indskannet omslag - N650U - 150 dpi
Omslagsfoto: Elly De Vries / Arcangel Images
Omslaget viser en øde lille vejbro
Indskannet omslag - N650U - 150 dpi
Similar in this library
Series
Pages
421
DDC/MDS
| 813.54 |