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Vol 1. No 3. December, 1997
Queer Reads
Cornwell Strikes Out
Falling in love with Patricia Cornwell and her novels is like, well, falling in love. The beloved can do no wrong; words get said and go unchallenged; faults are covered.
Then it happens, you know, that sudden sinking feeling...
Which is where I am now with Patricia Cornwell. Member of the family though she is, truth must be told: this girl just aint what she used to be.
She kicked off her crime writing career brilliantly with Postmortem, pitching the unforgettable Doctor Kay Scarpetta against the evils that (most often) men do. A string of brilliant follow-ons and then, these past two years...
Perhaps I'm being unkind. Can't expect everything that pours forth from her pen to be as riveting as Postmortem, can we?
One gets the feeling, however, that her heart is just not in recent efforts, which include Cause of Death and Unnatural Exposure and a non-Scarpetta novel called Hornet's Nest.
We get the same characters, the same problems, in almost formulaic style, moving from A to B with no real interest in what they're doing, not to mention loose plot ends and increasingly unbelievable plots and motivations.
One example: in Cause of Death, we start off with a brilliant diving scene in which our fearless Doctor goes scuba diving in the freezing James River. Only problem is, she's supposed to be covering for one her employees and living in that gentleman's house - and yet she has a full complement of scuba diving gear that she just happened to bring along.
Cornwell used to deliver absolutely first-rate page-turnersthat kept you up at night waiting to see how the plot would resolve itself. Those were the days.
Perhaps Doctor Scarpetta has run her course. Perhaps another Doctor Scarpetta waits to be born...
Fans will want to pick up Cause of Death and Unnatural Exposure; others might want to wait for the paperbacks, and in the meantime, check out Cornwell's earlier efforts.
And let's hope she gets her wind back soon.
– Wordabond
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