Book Review Thursday - 8/25

After this book, I have 2 more and I am caught up! I plan on getting those posted this weekend because I am not letting myself start another book until I am caught up.

Port Mortuary by Patricia Cornwell is the latest Kay Scarpetta novel and I am not sure that I can succinctly summarize this novel in a way that would not be a muddled mess. The book opens with Kay at Port Mortuary at Dover AFB and she is assisting her old military boss with virtual autopsies. Lucy and Marino show up to whisk her back to Boston where there is a body waiting to be autopsied at the new Cambridge Forensic Center that has been open for 6 months with Kay in charge even though she has been at Port Mortuary the entire time. The odd thing about the body is it bled after being transported to the morgue and, once Kay begins the autopsy, the team finds that it looks like a bomb went off inside of the body.

See? Muddled mess!

I read the book description and a few reviews on Amazon after I finished the book because it just didn’t feel like a Cornwell/Scarpetta novel. This novel was in first person and the last few have been in third person. I’m not sure what the reasoning was for the return except to see what Kay sees and feel what Kay feels through the novel. There was a lot of paranoia and Kay had a lot of issues with feeling like Benton, Lucy and even Marino were lying to her and keeping things from her. There was a lot of detail about inane happenings – one entire chapter was dedicated to a car ride and it seemed like every other line mentioned looking in the rearview or side mirrors. And it was a lengthy chapter.

The only good thing that I can see coming from this book was that Kay Scarpetta is back in a morgue doing autopsies. The autopsies and investigating is what made the series what it is and I hope that this book turns the series back in that direction.