content: This was my first Scarpetta novel; it will be my last. A flimsy plot: as another reviewer has already said, not "intellectually challenging." The characters are not credible: the women are overachieving amazons, the men are all cardboard cut-out cliches; even when the heroine's live-in is murdered, there's little genuine sense of loss.... The arsonist's methods take far too long to figure out -- a pointless "mystery" (I'm a Fire Marshal). The motivation of the serial killer is clinically wrong, an unabashed lift from "The Silence of the Lambs," where the motivation was also wrong.... (See John Douglas, ANATOMY OF MOTIVE.) The final confrontation, fought with handguns between helicopters, is not credible, either -- in fact, downright Hollywood "silly" (I'm a pilot, too). The novel is a waste of time and money.