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Review title: Not up to her usual standard
Product review: Cornwell shifts point of view here, from protagonist Kay Scarpetta's first person vulnerable (which made the earlier books so interesting) to third person boring. She devotes endless pages to minutiae that have no bearing on the plot, and describes the characters in one-dimensional terms (Scarpetta is "lonely," "brave," and adored by all who know her, while the rather pathetic Chandonne is invariably presented as loathsome because of his congenital abnormalities). Strangest of all, it seems that around page 440 Cornwell realized that she had to start wrapping things up, so within 10 pages or so she whips her characters into line with almost no emotional satisfaction for the reader. One particularly frustrating outcome is that of the three nasty villains, one is disposed of offhand, another dies offstage (as we are later told), and the third escapes (also not shown), no doubt to induce us to buy the next Scarpetta book. Ms. Cornwell, get back to where you were before!
