Black Notice

As winter grips Richmond, Virginia, an air of sombreness pervades chief medical examiner Kay Scarpetta's world. Her beloved niece Lucy is involved in a dangerous undercover police operation in Miami, and auntie fears for her life. A tyrannical new deputy chief, Diane Bray, wants to get Kay's department under her jurisdiction. Meanwhile, back at the office, someone has tinkered with the e-mail system, stealing Kay's identity and sending off slanderous and hurtful messages. Emotionally battered, Scarpetta fears she is going insane. Or, could it be that someone is deliberately sowing this harvest of sorrow?

Despite her personal problems, Scarpetta is still the reigning diva at the department of death. She is sent to investigate the purified remains of a man found inside a container ship, "eyes bulged froglike, and the scalp and beard were sloughing off with the outer layer of darkening skin." Kay finds strange, animal-like hairs on the man's clothing--the same hairs that she discovers on a murdered store clerk a few days later. In actuality, the bizarre killings extend well beyond Virginia; whoever killed the Richmond victims also butchered people in France. Kay and police captain Pete Marino are whisked off to Paris where they must collect top-secret information from a Paris morgue, and avoid becoming victims themselves.

This macabre tome is the stuff that classic Scarpetta tales are made of: creepy but compulsive autopsy scenes, plentiful plot twists and the compelling, if slightly more vulnerable, chief medical examiner herself. --Naomi Gesinger

Please Patricia find your magic once again as I long to read the next in the series........


Black Notice   June 24, 2005
Rich Milligan (Thatcham, Berkshire)
Could it be with this, the tenth, book in the Dr Scarpetta series that Patricia Cornwell has just begun to scrape the bottom of the barrel with both plot ideas and character progression?

I'd given the previous offering, Point of Origin, a lukewarm reception and accused Cornwell of not being able to offer Scarpetta fans anything new. For the first half of this book I was pleasantly surprised as there seemed to be a lot more pace and punch to the opening chapters. There was some great Lucy and Marino interplay and some great dialog between all the main characters. There was also an insight into how the ultra-professional and seemingly mechanical Scarpetta was hurting from the death of Bentley in the previous book. What was also great was to see another appearance of Scarpetta's nasty sister Dorothy who at the very least is great entertainment value.

Alas it then went rapidly downhill extremely quickly. The main storyline of the book is a real half baked and half produced idea of yet another motiveless serial killer. He's just thrown into the plot with no reason other than to produce another book. There's no significance and no consequence. What is even worse though is the absolutely absurd affair that Scarpetta carries out whilst in Paris. Apart from the fact it is extremely unbelievable, it is so poorly presented I would expect this style of writing and dialog more of a soap opera or Mills and Boon romance.

Finally just went I thought with the amount of pages left in my right hand there was no way this book could be brought to conclusion but would be strung over to the next one, the whole story is wrapped up in one final crazy chapter. Scarpetta let's the killer into her house like a naïve pensioner, Lucy arrives in the nick of time, gun-toting and screaming and final Marino screeches around the corner just in time to slap on the handcuffs. What rubbish, we really deserve better.

One last point, please please please, can we stop all the pathetic relationship psycho-analysis between the characters. Unfortunately with the book ending with the return of Scarpetta's toy boy, Jay Talley, it looks like we're in for some more self pitying outpourings from this bunch of supposedly "talented" people.


Better than the last but...   March 24, 2004
Rich (UK)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful

This gets three stars mainly because it was a better book than the previous one 'Point Of Origin'

This sees Scarpetta and the gang mainly dealing with the emotional fallout from that book.

as the book goes on the characters seem to lose all sense of themselves and do things which make no sense. e.g. Scarpetta's 'relationship' with the Interpol agent. This passage required utter suspension of disbelief

A big problem with this book and with the series as a whole is the character of Lucy.

The more angst and hangups the author saddles her with, the harder it becomes to like, or identify with her. She beats up her girlfriend, ignores Scarpetta for months at a time if she even looks at her wrong and treats everyone around her with nothing less than contempt, yet everyone throughout the book consistently make excuses for her and treat her as if she were a Goddess. This is one character who desperately needs a reality check. There is one passage where Scarpetta does finally let rip at her, yet this is undermined a couple of pages later by Scarpetta apologising as if 'poor' Lucy had done nothing wrong!

The story is not bad, however regular readers of Cornwell's novels won't find a lot that's new here -

Disappointing.


Increasingly Ludicrous   February 25, 2004
0 out of 1 found this review helpful

I have read a lot of Patricia Cornwell's books, and even though I find the main characters shallow and increasingly annoying, I can't help but keep reading them because of the gripping scientific detail. However, this one just went too far. It's like Cornwell has finally run out of ideas and used increasingly 2-dimensional characters, irritating soap-opera dialogue, and a more and more ludicrous and stereotypical storyline (abandoned-deformed-child hidden in basement by rich family turned evil murderer wandering the streets of paris). Admittedly, I haven't got to the end yet, but I'm one of those people who has to finish a book when I start it so I guess I will force myself to do it. I am just hoping that she doesn't start bringing people back from the dead now....