I’m late to the game as far as the Kay Scarpetta series is concerned. Like a lot of books I read, I stumbled into this series on my Libby app at some point in 2021. I was looking for a good long suspense series. Little did I know how much I’d come to love the character cast that make up the core of these books. I dare to say that I absolutely love Marino! He’s such a softie packed into gruff packaging. I love how he’s always there to look out for Kay even when she doesn’t want him to be there. The character writing is one of the main things that keeps me coming back to this series.
The book opens with Dr. Scarpetta house-sitting for a colleague who has gone to London because of a death in the family. She gets a mysterious phone call about a mysterious death at a Naval shipyard. From here the plot thickens and picks up throughout the remainder of the book. I wouldn’t say there were any dull points in the storyline. In fact, I particularly love how Cornwell can throw a total curveball into the story which I know will be relevant at some point, I just can’t figure out how. It seriously makes my gears turn trying to think through all the angles to figure it out before it’s solved in the book!
My only little issue with this book is how Dr. Scarpetta always has a reason to be where that the action is taking place. No medical examiner is ever needed in the heart of the mystery throughout the entire investigation. But, as I’m well aware, if she didn’t need to be everywhere, she wouldn’t be Kay Scarpetta and we wouldn’t have these fun novels to read.
Mysteries and Mayhem 