A serial killer is on the loose in Richmond, Virginia. Three women have died, brutalised and strangled in their own bedroom. There is no pattern: the killer appears to strike at random - but always early on Saturday mornings. So when Dr Kay Scarpetta, chief medical officer, is awakened at 2.33 am, she knows the news is bad: there is a fourth victim. And she fears now for those that will follow unless she can dig up new forensic evidence to aid the police. But not everyone is pleased to see a woman in this powerful job. Someone may even want to ruin her career and reputation ...
Kay Scarpetta Series
This gripping series follows a brilliant forensic pathologist as she delves into the darkest corners of the human mind to uncover the truth behind the most brutal crimes. With each case, she confronts not only the perpetrators but also her own limitations and moral dilemmas. Her uncompromising approach and analytical skills lead her to expose hidden motives and culprits seeking to remain undetected. It's a fascinating journey into the world of forensic science and criminal psychology.
Recommended Reading Order
A reclusive writer is dead. And her final manuscript has disappeared ... Someone is stalking Beryl Madison. Someone who spies on her and makes threatening, obscene phone-calls. Terrified, Beryl flees to Key West - but eventually she must return to her Richmond home. The very night she arrives, Beryl inexplicably invites her killer in ... Thus begins for Dr Kay Scarpetta the investigation of a crime that is as convoluted as it is bizarre. Why would Beryl open the door to someone who brutally slashed and then nearly decapitated her? Did she know her killer? Adding to the intrigue is Beryl's enigmatic relationship with a prize-winning author and the disappearance of her own manuscript. As Scarpetta retraces Beryl's footsteps, an investigation that begins in the laboratory with microscopes and lasers leads her deep into a nightmare that soon becomes her own.
Dr. Kay Scarpetta, a forensic pathologist and her colleagues, investigates a couple killer.
The fingerprints say the murderer is the man who's just been executed ... At 11.05 one December evening in Richmond, Virginia, convicted murderer Ronnie Joe Waddell is pronounced dead in the electric chair. At the morgue Dr Kay Scarpetta waits for Waddell's body. Preparing to perform a post-mortem before the subject is dead is a strange feeling, but Scarpetta has been here before. And Waddell's death is not the only newsworthy event on this freezing night: the grotesquely wounded body of a young boy is found propped against a rubbish skip. To Scarpetta the two cases seem unrelated, until she recalls that the body of Waddell's victim had been arranged in a strikingly similar position ...
The Body Farm
- 368 pages
- 13 hours of reading
THE #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING KAY SCARPETTA NOVEL FROM PATRICIA CORNWELL When an eleven-year-old girl is found murdered, Kay Scarpetta, Chief Medical Examiner for the Commonwealth of Virginia, gets another chance at stopping one of the most heartless and horrifying serial killers of her career: the demented Temple Gault.
From Potter's field
- 369 pages
- 13 hours of reading
Dr. Kay Scarpetta matches wits with a sadistic killer who infiltrates the FBI's top-secret artificial intelligence system and closes in on Scarpetta herself
Cause of Death
- 356 pages
- 13 hours of reading
It is New Year's Eve and Dr. Kay Scarpetta plunges into the murky depths of a ship graveyard to recover he very human remains of Ted Eddings, an investigative reporter.
Unnatural Exposure
- 367 pages
- 13 hours of reading
A body is discovered in a Virginia landfill. The details --- expert removal of head and limbs --- mirror that of a case Dr. Kay Scarpetta has been investigating in Ireland. But for Scarpetta, the game has only just begun. The killer boldly contacts her via the Internet, signing off with the ominous screen name deadoc. As her investigation deepens, Scarpetta discovers that the victim in Virginia was exposed to a rare smallpox-like virus before she was killed, and that Scarpetta herself could be infected. Now she knows she is up against a killer unlike any she has pursued before --- a relentless psychopath with access to an incredibly sophisticated arsenal of deadly force. And with a very personal interest in seeing Kay Scarpetta suffer.
Point of origin
- 342 pages
- 12 hours of reading
Carrie Grethen, partner in crime to William Temple Gault, has escaped from prison. Before she does so she sends Kay Scarpetta a message which makes it all too clear that she blames her (and Lucy, and Benton Wesley, and Pete Marino) for Gault's death, and has specific - if cryptic - plans for revenge. Wary and quite shaken, Scarpetta still has a professional life to get on with, including investigating the death of an unknown female in a fire which has destroyed the isolated farmhouse home of her erstwhile political boss. The post mortem reveals that the woman was stabbed before the fire was started, but while Scarpetta and her colleagues are puzzling over means and motive they are called out to the scene of another fire and another murder. The pattern is the same, the answers as elusive and then Benton disappears while following up a tip-off. Suddenly, and with appalling clarity, Scarpetta sees that Carrie has set up a scenario in which she can manipulate them all and in which she appears to have the inescapable upper hand. A novel of high suspense from the acknowledged mistress of the forensic thriller.
Black Notice
- 432 pages
- 16 hours of reading
An intriguing Dr Kay Scarpetta novel which will take Kay an ocean's breadth away from home. The case begins when a cargo ship arriving at Richmond, Virginia's Deep Water Terminal from Belgium is discovered to be transporting a locked, sealed container holding the decomposed remains of a stowaway. The post mortem performed by the Chief Medical Examiner, Kay Scarpetta, initially reveals neither a cause of death nor an identification. But the victim's personal effects and an odd tattoo take Scarpetta on a hunt for information that leads to Interpol's headquarters in Lyon, where she receives critical instructions: go to the Paris morgue to receive secret evidence and then return to Virginia to carry out a mission. It is a mission that could ruin her career. In a story which crosses international borders, BLACK NOTICE puts Dr Kay Scarpetta directly in harm's way and places her and those she holds dear at mortal risk.
The last precinct
- 468 pages
- 17 hours of reading
The new era of Scarpetta begins… In this #1 New York Times bestselling novel, Patricia Cornwell takes her readers deeper into Kay Scarpetta’s heart and soul than ever before…. Thwarting an attack by a suspected serial killer puts Virginia’s Chief Medial Examiner Kay Scarpetta in the harsh glare of the spotlight. As her personal and professional lives come under suspicion, she discovers that the so-called Werewolf murders may have extended to New York City and into the darkest corners of her past. A formidable prosecutor, a female assistant district attorney from New York, is brought into the case—and Scarpetta must struggle to make what she knows to be the truth prevail against mounting and unnerving evidence to the contrary. Tested in every way, she turns inward to ask, Where do you go when there is nowhere left?
Blow fly
- 544 pages
- 20 hours of reading
After her resignation as Virginia's Chief Medical Examiner and the horrifying events which threatened her life in THE LAST PRECINCT, Kay Scarpetta has abandoned her elegant home in Richmond and is quietly living in Florida, beginning to get some balance back in her life and slowly establishing herself as a private forensic consultant. But her past won't let her rest, and her grief for Benton Wesley continues to grow, not diminish, as does the rage within Lucy, her niece. Then the architect of her changed fortunes contacts her from his cell on death row: deformed, blinded by Scarpetta's own actions, incarcerated in Texas strongest prison, Jean-Baptiste Chardonne still has the ability to terrify. But, unkown to Scarpetta, there are other forces behind the wolfman's apparent actions, invisibly shepherding her and those closest to her towards eliminating those who threaten them all. And it is all orchestrated by the one man in her life who knows every nuance of her soul.
Since Postmortem garnered critical acclaim and a record-breaking five awards for a first crime novel, the Scarpetta novels have often been imitated, but never bettered. Against her own judgement and the advice of Benton Wesley and her niece, Lucy, Scarpetta agrees to return to Virginia as a consultant pathologist on a case involving the death of a fourteen-year-old girl. Accompanied by Pete Marino she finds the once familiar territory of her morgue and her department much changed, and the new Chief Medical Examiner treats her with disdain despite the obvious fact that he is in desperate need of her expertise. But professional as ever, she re-examines the evidence and proves the girl was murdered. She also finds trace evidence which matches that found on an accident victim and at the scene where one of Lucy's operatives was attacked. It is not only a forensic puzzle, but opens up the probability that someone is after those closest to Scarpetta.
Predator
- 480 pages
- 17 hours of reading
"Florida is full of predators, from the animals who thrive in its humid heat to the humans who stalk the air-conditioned malls, and they all give Dr Kay Scarpetta, now Director of Forensic Science and Medicine at the National Forensic Academy, the opportunity and the means to do what she does best - persuading the dead to speak to her. In the icy chill of Boston, Benton Wesley is working on a secret project involving convicted killers, one of whom appears to confess to an even higher number of murders than the authorities had known about. It is a project that gives Scarpetta deep disquiet, as does the behaviour of her neice Lucy, who is spending too much time drinking and indulging in causal pickups in cheap bars. Then the Academy is called in to assist in the discovery of a young woman's body in Massachusetts. She has been tortured and sexually abused, her body tattooed with handprints. The same sort of handprints Lucy has seen on the flesh of her latest pick-up..." - back cover.
Book of the dead
- 512 pages
- 18 hours of reading
The 'book of the dead' is the morgue log in which all cases are entered. For Kay Scarpetta, however, it is about to have a new meaning. Fresh from her battle with a psychopath in Florida, Scarpetta moves to South Carolina and opens a private forensic pathology practice. A string of brutal killings shatters her dreams of a quiet life.
Scarpetta
- 500 pages
- 18 hours of reading
Leaving behind her forensic pathology practice in South Carolina, Kay Scarpetta takes up an assignment in New York City, where the NYPD has asked her to examine an injured patient in a psychiatric ward. The handcuffed and chained patient, Oscar Bane, has specifically asked for her, and when she literally has her gloved hands on him, he begins to talk - and the story he has to tell turns out to be one of the most bizarre she has ever heard. He says his injuries were sustained in the course of a murder ... that he did not commit. Is Bane a criminally insane stalker who has fixed on Scarpetta? Or is his paranoid tale true, and it is he who is being spied on, followed and stalked by the actual killer? The only thing Scarpetta knows for certain is that a woman has been tortured and murdered - and that more violent deaths will follow...
It is the week before Christmas. The effects of the credit crunch have prompted Dr Kay Scarpetta to offer her services pro bono to New York City's Office of the Chief Medical Examiner. But in no time at all, her increased visibility seems to precipitate a string of dramatic and unsettling events. She is asked live on the air about the sensational case of Hannah Starr, who has vanished and is presumed dead. Moments later during the same broadcast, she receives a startling call-in from a former psychiatric patient of Benton Wesley's. When she returns after the show to the apartment where she and Benton live, she finds a suspicious package - possibly a bomb - waiting for her at the front desk. Soon the apparent threat on Scarpetta's life finds her embroiled in a deadly plot that includes a famous actor accused of an unthinkable sex crime and the disappearance of a beautiful millionairess with whom Lucy seems to have shared a secret past....
Port Mortuary
- 354 pages
- 13 hours of reading
Krimi. When Scarpetta examines a young man's body, she discovers stunning indications that he may have been alive when he was zipped inside a pouch and locked inside the cooler of her new Cambridge Forensic Center in Massachusetts. Various 3-D radiology scans reveal more shocking details about internal injuries unlike any Scarpetta has ever seen. These suggest the possibility of a conspiracy to cause mass casualties, and she races against time to discover who and why before more people die
Red Mist
- 501 pages
- 18 hours of reading
The nineteenth book in the Kay Scarpetta series, from No. 1 bestselling author Patricia Cornwell. 'America's most chilling writer of crime fiction' The Times Kay Scarpetta has arranged to meet an inmate at the high-security Georgia Prison for Women. The prisoner is a convicted sex offender and the mother of a vicious and diabolically brilliant killer. Against advice, Scarpetta is determined to hear this woman out - she believes she may hold some answers to the murder of her former deputy. But soon she finds connections to a string of grisly killings. As she learns more, Scarpetta is compelled to conclude that this is only the beginning of a terrifying terrain of conspiracy on an international scale. And she is the only one who can stop it . . . Praise for the groundbreaking series: 'One of the best crime writers writing today' Guardian 'Devilishly clever' Sunday Times 'The top gun in this field' Daily Telegraph 'Forget the pretenders. Cornwell reigns' Mirror 'The Agatha Christie of the DNA age' Express
A woman has vanished while digging a dinosaur bone bed in the remote wilderness of Canada. Somehow, the only evidence has made its way to the inbox of Chief Medical Examiner Kay Scarpetta, over two thousand miles away in Boston. She has no idea why. But as events unfold with alarming speed, Scarpetta begins to suspect the paleontologist's disappearance is connected to a series of crimes much closer to home: a gruesome murder, inexplicable tortures, and trace evidence from the last living creatures of the dinosaur age. When she turns to those around her, Scarpetta finds that the danger and suspicion have penetrated even her closest circles. Her niece Lucy speaks in riddles. Her lead investigator Pete Marino and FBI husband Benton Wesley have secrets of their own. Feeling alone and betrayed, Scarpetta is tempted by someone from her past as she tracks a killer both cunning and cruel.
Dust
- 495 pages
- 18 hours of reading
After working on one of the worst mass killings in US history, Chief Medical Examiner Kay Scarpetta returns home to recover, but an unsettling call drives her straight back to work. The body of a young woman has been discovered inside the sheltered gates of MIT, draped in an unusual cloth and posed in a way that is too deliberate to be the killer's first strike. A preliminary examination reveals that the body is covered in a fine dust that under ultra-violet light fluoresces blood-red, emerald-green and sapphire-blue, and physical evidence links this to another series of disturbing homicides in Washington, DC. As Scarpetta pieces together the fragments of evidence she discovers that the cases connect, yet also seem to conflict, and with so much at stake, it's clear that she is the only one who can solve it . . . Dust is a thrilling, addictive novel featuring one of the most iconic, original and compelling characters in crime fiction today.
Patricia Cornwell delivers the next enthralling thriller in her high-stakes series starring Kay Scarpetta - a complex tale involving a serial sniper who strikes chillingly close to the forensic sleuth herself.
The No. 1 bestselling series starring medical examiner Dr. Kay Scarpetta.
Chaos
- 385 pages
- 14 hours of reading
"#1 New York Times bestselling author Patricia Cornwell delivers the twenty-fourth thriller in her high-stakes series starring medical examiner Dr. Kay Scarpetta"--
Related books
Postmortem introduces Dr. Scarpetta, who knows the smell of bone dust from a skullcap saw and how to read a body for clues via lasers, DNA, and computers. As Scarpetta slowly closes in on a killer known as Mr. Nobody, she gets the creepy, well-informed feeling that the killer is closing in on her. Cornwell's debut swept the mystery-writing awards and made her somebody. In Body of Evidence, Scarpetta investigates the murder of a Southern writer who mysteriously opened the door for her killer. In All That Remains, she hunts a serial killer of young lovers--including the daughter of the president's drug czar, which complicates the forensic chase with political intrigue.
A Second Scarpetta Omnibus
Cruel And Unusual / The Body Farm / From Potter's Field
- 1024 pages
- 36 hours of reading
Book by Patricia Cornwell
Ein Fall für Kay Scarpetta / Ein Mord für Kay Scarpetta
- 795 pages
- 28 hours of reading
Nach monatelangen bedrohlichen Anrufen und dem Gefühl, beobachtet zu werden, flieht die erfolgreiche Schriftstellerin Beryl Madison aus Key West, als eine erschreckende Nachricht auf ihr Auto gekratzt wird. Nach ihrer Rückkehr nach Richmond deaktiviert sie jedoch ihren Einbruchmelder und öffnet die Tür für jemanden, der sie fast enthauptet. Die Chefmedizinierin Dr. Kay Scarpetta fragt sich, warum Beryl ihn hereingelassen hat und wo ihr neuestes Manuskript geblieben ist. Die Suche nach Antworten führt Scarpetta in den Mord an einer anderen Schriftstellerin – Beryls eifersüchtiger Mentorin. Während sie mit persönlichen und beruflichen Problemen kämpft, nutzt Scarpetta ihre forensischen Fähigkeiten, um Beweise zu sammeln, die ohne ihre Intelligenz, Mitgefühl und Vorstellungskraft bedeutungslos wären. Vier Frauen, die nichts gemeinsam haben, sind die Opfer eines brillanten Monsters – eines "Mr. Nobody", der unbemerkt durch eine gelähmte Stadt zieht und eine grausame Spur der Verwüstung hinterlässt. Mit geschickten Händen und den neuesten forensischen Fortschritten ist die unermüdliche medizinische Gutachterin Kay Scarpetta entschlossen, den Wahnsinnigen zu entlarven. Doch jemand versucht, ihre Ermittlungen zu sabotieren, und schlimmer noch, jemand will sie tot sehen...
Kay Scarpetta bittet zu Tisch. Aus d. Amerikan. v. Peter Beyer
- 94 pages
- 4 hours of reading
In diesem Buch zeigt sich die Krimiheldin Kay Scarpetta als Gastgeberin, die zusammen mit ihrem Kollegen Pete Marino und ihrer Nichte Lucy Farinelli an Weihnachten kocht. Jeder bringt sein Spezialgericht mit, was einen neuen Blick auf die Charaktere aus Patricia Cornwells Bestsellern ermöglicht.
