Blow Fly (Dr Kay Scarpetta #12) by Patricia Cornwell
Genre: Crime fiction, Mystery
Read: 22nd June 2010
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Published: 13th October 2003
★★★★ 4 stars
SYNOPSIS:
A cold case turns red-hot when a death-row inmate renews his acquaintance with Dr. Kay Scarpetta in this “utterly chilling”.
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.
Settling into her new life as a private forensic consultant, Kay Scarpetta agrees to investigate a cold case in Louisiana—the baffling eight-year-old murder of a woman with a history of blackouts and violent outbursts.
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. From his cell on death row, he demands an audience with the legendary Dr. Scarpetta. But, unknown 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.
With her friends and family by her side, Scarpetta tries to guess what sort of endgame this madman has in mind—how, if at all, it’s related to the Louisiana case—and then confronts the shock of her life: a blow that will force her to question the loyalty and trust of all she holds dear...
MY REVIEW:
I don't know what the fuss was about this book, as I had received quite a few negative comments in regards to saying it was the worst book etc, but I have to say that I thoroughly enjoyed it! I liked the change in perspective because I felt as though Scarpetta was getting a little stale and needed a change. "The Last Precinct" (the novel prior to this one) was the worst one I had read and had I not known it was paramount to the following books I would have thrown it away.
However BLOW FLY was a refreshing change. Reading in the third person allowed for viewing things through all the other characters' eyes and didn't restrict everything through the eyes of Scarpetta. Her continual grumbling and carry-on in "The Last Precinct" was enough for me to tell her shove it, but this book gave different insights as we saw things from the killers, the cops and our other favourite characters' perspective.
BLOW FLY I found was a refreshing change which gave the many answers for which readers sought throughout the previous novel (which gave anything but). We also saw a new chapter opening for Scarpetta as well an earth-shattering secret for her, which began several books earlier (unbeknownst to the reader), revealed in this one.
I thoroughly enjoyed BLOW FLY and look forward to the next one in the series as we see the characters fall into their new roles, and Scarpetta settle into private practice in Miami.
MEET THE AUTHOR:
Patricia Cornwell, née Patricia Carroll Daniels, (born June 9, 1956, Miami, Florida, U.S.), American crime writer best known for her best-selling series featuring the medical examiner Dr. Kay Scarpetta.
Daniels’s father deserted the family when she was five years old. Several years later her depressed mother attempted to give the girl away to neighbours, the Baptist evangelist Billy Graham and his wife, Ruth. Daniels stayed with friends of the Grahams while her mother recovered from a nervous breakdown. These childhood experiences left their mark. During her years at Davidson College (B.A., 1979) in North Carolina, she fought eating disorders and was admitted for a brief stay in a mental hospital. She married one of her professors, Charles Cornwell, in 1979. (The couple divorced a decade later.) After graduating she took a job as a police reporter for the Charlotte Observer.
Because her career brought her into close contact with many aspects of crime, she strove to understand all the intricacies and facets of criminal behaviour. She interviewed medical examiners, volunteered as a police officer, spent endless hours in the morgue’s medical library, and took classes in forensic science at the police academy. She also worked at the office of the chief medical examiner in Richmond, Virginia, where she was allowed to observe autopsies.
Cornwell’s first book, A Time for Remembering (1983), was a biography of Ruth Graham, who had served as a surrogate mother. Cornwell, having developed what she called a “healthy respect for evil” while working for the Observer, made the focus of her second book crime. Her first three essays in the crime novel genre had been rejected by publishers, but she was encouraged by one editor to develop the fictional character of Kay Scarpetta, who had appeared in minor roles in the early attempts. Scarpetta—much like Cornwell in appearance and ideology and seemingly a self-portrait—was featured as a medical examiner in Postmortem (1990), and with this book Cornwell’s writing career was launched. The series continued with Body of Evidence (1991), All That Remains (1992), Cause of Death (1996), Black Notice (1999), Blow Fly (2003), Book of the Dead (2007), Scarpetta (2008), The Scarpetta Factor (2009), Port Mortuary (2010), Red Mist (2011), The Bone Bed (2012), Dust (2013), and Chaos (2016). Early efforts in the series maintained a first-person voice, allowing the reader insight into the mind of the preternaturally observant Scarpetta. Several later novels employed third-person narration. Cornwell used the latter approach to explore the disturbed minds of her heroine’s quarries but eventually returned to using Scarpetta’s perspective alone. The novels developed an intense following, selling more than 100 million copies.
Cornwell also wrote several other series. The Captain Chase series, which began with Quantum (2019), features a female protagonist who is a NASA pilot, quantum physicist, and cybercrime investigator. Cornwell’s other works included a novel (Isle of Dogs, 2001), a children’s book (Life’s Little Fable, 1999), and a work of nonfiction (Portrait of a Killer: Jack the Ripper—Case Closed, 2002). The latter book controversially posits the artist Walter Sickert as the fiendish killer.
Other areas of expertise & interests
Forensics | Forensic Technologies | Ballistics | Weapons | Explosives | Pathology & Autopsies | Crime | Historical and Unsolved Criminal Cases | Jack The Ripper | Helicopter Piloting | Suba Diving | Archaeological Excavation Experience
She married Staci Gruber in 2006 and the couple live in Boston.
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