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Kay Scarpetta

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.

Three Complete Novels. Postmortem. Body of Evidence. All That Remains
Trübe Wasser sind kalt. Der Keim des Verderbens
The Bone Bed
The Scarpetta factor
The Body Farm
The last precinct

Recommended Reading Order

  1. 1

    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 ...

    Postmortem
  2. 2

    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. For more about Patricia Cornwell and her books visit her website at www.patricia-cornwell.com

    Body of Evidence
  3. 3

    POSTMORTEM The first Dr Kay Scarpetta novel which won five international awards for the best first crime novel of 1990. 'Terrific first novel, full of suspense, in which even the scientific bits grip.' The Times ALL THAT REMAINS A killer is stalking young lovers. Taking their lives and leaving just one tantalising clue . 'Another triumph for Patricia Cornwell's special brew of forensic and intuitive sleuthing.' Sunday Times Visit Patricia Cornwell's own website at www.patricia- cornwell.com

    All that Remains
  4. 4

    Cruel and Unusual

    • 437 pages
    • 16 hours of reading
    4.2(103226)Add rating

    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 ...

    Cruel and Unusual
  5. 5

    The Body Farm

    • 293 pages
    • 11 hours of reading
    4.1(69540)Add rating

    Dr. Kay Scarpetta, chief medical examiner for Virginia, investigates the sex murder of a girl by an escaped convict. The probe requires exhuming the body for a second autopsy. Lots of information on bodies and autopsies. By the author of Cruel and Unusual.

    The Body Farm
  6. 6

    From Potter's Field

    • 340 pages
    • 12 hours of reading
    4.1(54490)Add rating

    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.

    From Potter's Field
  7. 7

    Cause of Death

    • 370 pages
    • 13 hours of reading
    4.0(46451)Add rating

    An investigative reporter is found dead in Virginia's icy waters ... New Year's Eve and the final murder scene of Virginia's bloodiest year takes Scarpetta thirty feet below the Elizabeth River's icy surface. A diver, Ted Eddings, is dead, an investigative reporter who was a favourite at the Medical Examiner's office. Was Eddings probing the frigid depths of the Inactive Shipyard for a story, or simply diving for sunken trinkets? And why did Scarpetta receive a phone call from someone reporting the death before the police were notified? The case envelops Scarpetta, her niece Lucy, and police captain Pete Marino in a world where both cutting-edge technology and old-fashioned detective work are critical offensive weapons. Together they follow the trail of death to a well of violence as dark and forbidding as water that swirled over Ted Eddings. For more about Patricia Cornwell and her books visit her website on www.patricia-cornwell.com

    Cause of Death
  8. 8
  9. 9

    Medical examiner Kay Scarpetta's investigation of a killer who uses fire to hide his crimes turns personal when she learns that her old nemesis, Carrie Grethen, is somehow involved.

    Point of Origin
  10. 10

    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. For more on Patricia Cornwell and her books visit her website at www.patricia-cornwell.com

    Black Notice
  11. 11

    Virginia's Chief Medical Examiner Kay Scarpetta finds herself an object of suspicion--and criminal investigation--as she discovers that the so-called Werewolf murders may have extended to New York City and into the darkest corners of her past.

    The last precinct
  12. 12

    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. Visit the author's website at www.patricia-cornwell.com

    Blow fly
  13. 14

    Predator

    • 480 pages
    • 17 hours of reading
    3.7(28788)Add rating

    "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.

    Predator
  14. 15

    Book of the Dead

    • 387 pages
    • 14 hours of reading
    3.5(448)Add rating

    The 'book of the dead' is the morgue log, the ledger in which all cases are entered by hand. For Kay Scarpetta, however, it is about to have a new meaning. Fresh from her bruising battle with a psychopath in Florida, Scarpetta decides it's time for a change of pace. Moving to the historic city of Charleston, South Carolina, she opens a unique private forensic pathology practice, one in which she and her colleagues offer expert crime scene investigation and autopsies to communities lacking local access to competent death investigation and modern technology. It seems like an ideal situation, until the murders and other violent deaths begin. A woman is ritualistically murdered in her multi-million-dollar beach home. The body of an abused young boy is found dumped in a desolate marsh. A sixteen-year-old tennis star is found nude and mutilated near Piazza Navona in Rome. Scarpetta has dealt with many brutal and unusual crimes before, but never a string of them as baffling, or as terrifying, as the ones before her now. Before she is through, that book of the dead will contain many names - and the pen may be poised to write her own.

    Book of the Dead
  15. 15

    Relocating to Charleston after a particularly grueling case, Dr. Kay Scarpetta opens a private forensic pathology practice but is quickly targeted by local politics and a covert saboteur before a series of violent deaths bring her skills into high view. 1,500,000 first printing. BOMC, Lit Guild, Doubleday, & Mystery Guild Main.

    Book of the Dead
  16. 16

    Scarpetta

    • 500 pages
    • 18 hours of reading
    3.8(29272)Add rating

    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...

    Scarpetta
  17. 17
  18. 18

    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

    Port Mortuary
  19. 19

    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

    Red Mist
  20. 20

    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.

    The Bone Bed
  21. 21

    Dust

    • 495 pages
    • 18 hours of reading
    3.6(300)Add rating

    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 in a way to deliberate to be the killer's first strike. A preliminary examination revels the the body is covered in a fine dust that under ultra-violet light fluoresces blood-red, emerald-green and sapphire-blue, and the physical evidence links this to another series of disturbing homicides in Washington, DC. As she pieces together the fragments of evidence, Scarpetta discovers that the cases connect, yet also seem to conflict, drawing herself and her team deeper in the the dark world of designer drugs, drone technology, organised crime, and shocking corruption at the highest level.

    Dust
  22. 22

    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.

    Flesh And Blood
  23. 23

    No. 1 New York Times bestselling author Patricia Cornwell delivers the twenty-third engrossing thriller in her high-stakes series starring medical examiner Dr. Kay Scarpetta. Dr. Kay Scarpetta is working a suspicious death scene in Cambridge, Massachusetts when an emergency alert sounds on her phone. A video link lands in her text messages and seems to be from her computer genius niece Lucy. But how can it be? It's clearly a surveillance film of Lucy taken almost twenty years ago. As Scarpetta watches she begins to learn frightening secrets about her niece, whom she has loved and raised like a daughter. That film clip and then others sent soon after raise dangerous legal implications that increasingly isolate Scarpetta and leave her confused, worried, and not knowing where to turn. She doesn't know whom she can tell - not her FBI husband Benton Wesley or her investigative partner Pete Marino. Not even Lucy. In this new novel, Cornwell launches these unforgettable characters on an intensely psychological odyssey that includes the mysterious death of a Hollywood mogul's daughter, aircraft wreckage on the bottom of the sea in the Bermuda Triangle, a grisly gift left in the back of a crime scene truck, and videos from the past that threaten to destroy Scarpetta's entire world and everyone she loves. The diabolical presence behind what unfolds seems obvious - but strangely, not to the FBI. Certainly that's the message they send when they raid Lucy's estate and begin building a case that could send her to prison for the rest of her life. In the latest novel in her bestselling series featuring chief medical examiner Dr. Kay Scarpetta, Cornwell will captivate readers with the shocking twists, high-wire tension, and cutting-edge forensic detail that she is famous for, proving yet again why she's the world's #1 bestselling crime writer

    Depraved Heart
  24. 23
  25. 24

    No. 1 New York Times bestselling author Patricia Cornwell delivers the twenty-fourth engrossing thriller in her high-stakes series starring medical examiner Dr. Kay Scarpetta. Someone is following you... One summer evening in New England, two young girls stumble upon a body. Forensic pathologist Dr. Kay Scarpetta arrives at the scene to find a young woman has been attacked with almost superhuman force. Someone is taunting you... Meanwhile, people close to Scarpetta start receiving suspicious calls. Could they be linked to Scarpetta's anonymous cyber stalker, Tailend Charlie? Someone wants to destroy you... A second death shocks Scarpetta to her core. Because analysis of the body shows a material that doesn't exist on earth. And it's clear that someone, or something, is coming for her, and is hell-bent on creating chaos...

    Chaos
  • Two in one „Trübe Wasser sind kalt“: Ausgerechnet an Silvester wird Gerichtsmedizinerin Dr. Kay Scarpetta zu einem Fall gerufen: Ein junger Reporter wurde tot im Wasser eines Schiffsfriedhofs gefunden – es ist der Beginn einer Reihe rätselhafter Ereignisse … „Der Keim des Verderbens“: Eine Mordserie versetzt ganz Amerika in Angst und Schrecken, denn die Opfer tragen einen tödlichen Virus in sich. Und es scheint fast schon zu spät, um eine Seuche zu verhindern …

    Trübe Wasser sind kalt. Der Keim des Verderbens
  • 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.

    Three Complete Novels. Postmortem. Body of Evidence. All That Remains
  • Bundeling in een stevige band van drie spannende romans met patholoog-anatoom Kay Scarpetta in de hoofdrol. In 'Rigor mortis' onderzoekt ze de gruwelijke moord op een jongen. De werkwijze komt precies overeen met een moord waarvoor de moordenaar al is geëxecuteerd. Bij een andere moord worden de vingerafdrukken gevonden van diezelfde moordenaar. Kay heeft intussen het vermoeden, dat er iemand in haar computerbestanden heeft zitten rommelen. Haar assistente neemt plotseling ontslag en korte tijd later wordt ze vermoord. In 'Modus operandi' wordt een elfjarig meisje dood aangetroffen in de bossen. Een bij de politie bekende seriemoordenaar zou de dader kunnen zijn, hij was alleen niet ter plekke gesignaleerd. Tegelijkertijd wordt Lucy, het nichtje van Kay, betrapt op het stelen van geheime gegevens uit het computerbestand van de politie. In 'Het Kaïnsteken' wordt op kerstavond het levenloze lichaam van een jonge vrouw gevonden in Central Park (New York City). Kay biedt de FBI de helpende hand bij de speurtocht naar de moordenaar en naar de identiteit van de dode vrouw.

    Kay Scarpetta Thrillers