Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Each time I pick up a new Scarpetta novel, I am filled with hope that Patricia Cornwell will return to the style of the early novels that made me fall in love with the series. Sadly, this novel, like so many of the recent ones, is another big disappointment. I'm not even going to bother trying to give a plot summary because it's hardly worth the effort. Yes, there's a disturbing murder of a 14-year-old girl, but it hardly counts for anything in this book. Instead we have the usual Lucy angst because her lover, Henri (Henrietta), was attacked and won't talk to her. We also have Scarpetta angst because Benton Wesley faked his death for years and didn't tell her. Wesley has angst as well because he's still keeping secrets from Scarpetta and Lucy. And why are Wesley and Lucy keeping the fact that Henri was attacked such a big secret from Scarpetta? Why don't these people just TALK to each other? Since they keep getting interrupted on the phone, then maybe they could try emailing each other. Oh yeah, there's also Marino angst, with his long time crush on Scarpetta and a really bizarre "rough sex" scene involving him and the mother of the victim. As usual, even though Scarpetta is a respected expert in forensic analysis, the bureaucrats are out to get her. She is summoned to her old ME office in Virginia to work on the case involving the 14-year-old girl and faces overt hostility by Dr. Joel Marcus, her successor. He calls her in to help with the case but doesn't even have the grace to pretend he's happy to have her there. Of course, the office has become a shambles under his direction-- but nobody seems to care that the man hired to replace the brilliant Scarpetta is incompetent. The book ends abruptly and the reader is left shaking his/her head and asking, "What the heck just happened?" I wish Cornwell would dump Lucy-- she grows more annoying with each book; quit making all her plots revolve around Scarpetta's bizzare little circle of friends/lovers/family members; have Scarpetta and Wesley either work things out or give it up; and give Marino a girlfriend so he can stop salivating over Scarpetta. And while we're at it, let's have the bureaucrats recognize Scarpetta's brilliance and quit fighting her while she does what they hire her to do. I can't quite give up on this series yet, because the books were just so good in the past. But it's getting harder and harder to keep reading them, and I no longer move them to the top of my reading stack.