Barbara Ludman POINT OF ORIGIN by Patricia Cornwell (Little, Brown)
Patricia Cornwell’s life generally spills over into her books. In this one, it threatens to take the book over. She’s made a background theme of the FBI’s prurient interest in its agents’ affairs ever since she was named as co-respondent in a divorce suit lodged by an FBI agent, who objected to her relationship with his wife; here, it’s in the foreground. Also, she’s been knocking off the nice guys, some of them current or former FBI agents – and in this book, one begins to tire of it.
At the same time, the obsessions of her heroine, forensic pathologist Kay Scarpetta, come together in this thriller so neatly that one wonders whether this isn’t the end of a series.
The mad Carrie Grethen, whom we haven’t seen since she and the equally insane Temple Gault tortured people to death up and down the American East Coast several years ago, is back and more horrible than ever.
The book begins with a spectacular fire at a house and stable and ends in the air – literally – and in between is as gory as one would expect from Cornwell. We sit in on autopsies, described in bloody detail – we even go shopping for pots to boil the flesh off bones, so we can examine them for nicks made by sharp instruments. And this is the workaday world of the good guys. When it gets to the villains, it’s far worse.
Cornwell has an enormous following, and one learns a lot. Particularly, one learns not to read Cornwell over dinner or late at night.