Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I am sad to say that while I have been a fan of Patricia Cornwell's for years, this is the last time I will buy one of her books. This has been building up for awhile (probably starting 3-4 books ago). I am not sure what's happened, but it seems like she's gotten stuck on themes and characters in a way that is suffocating her writing. Her main characters are becoming one-dimensional and even unlikable, and her repeated reliance on the 'Carrie Grethen' subplot has become incredibly tedious. She seems as trapped and bewitched by the imaginary Carrie as her characters supposedly are. And the results are just as unhealthy. Her apparent need for this character, and for her increasingly extreme portrayal of Lucy, has actually become a little disturbing. My overall experience with this book was one of constantly feeling like a great, addictive story was somewhere just out of reach, interspersed wtih being either bored by the repetition or jarred out of the narrative by what I felt were the author's personal obsessions rather than points of character development. I kept hoping she could break through and get to the story, but everything just bogged down and in the end, reading this was very much like experiencing the crushingly oppressive heat that she endlessly described throughout the book. She was a great writer who provided me with many happy hours of reading in the past, and I will really miss her books. But I'm not willing to pay the premium price expected for 'book by a well-known author' for the kind of writing I experienced in 'Chaos'. It honestly saddens me to give this one star, but I just can't give it more than that.