Black Notice

Overview

Cornwell delivers a high-stakes Kay Scarpetta novel with an intrigue that will take Kay an ocean's length away from home. The nightmare begins when a cargo ship arriving at Richmond's Deep Water Terminal from Belgium is discovered to be transporting a locked, sealed container holding the decomposed remains of a stowaway. The autopsy performed by Chief Medical Examiner Dr. 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, France, where she receives critical instructions: go to the Paris morgue to receive forbidden, secret evidence and then return to Virginia to carry out a mission. It is a mission that could ruin her career. In a story that careens across international borders, Black Notice puts Dr. Kay Scarpetta directly in harm's way and places her and those she holds dear at mortal risk.

Editorial Reviews

It's like a splash of cold water on a hot day to be plunged, after the irritating third-person satire of Cornwell's last novel, Southern Cross (1998), back into the bracing narration of medical examiner Kay Scarpetta. As in the nine Scarpettas past (Point of Origin, etc.), here it's not the novel's events, startling as they are, that propel the story so much as the deep-hearted responses of Kay, as real a hero as any in thriller fiction, to the "evil" her word that threatens. Evil wears several faces here, from petty to monstrous. Most insidious is the office sabotage insubordination, thefts, fraudulent e-mails that's making the grieving Kay look as if she's lost her grip since her lover's murder in Point of Origin. More destructive are the overt attempts by calculating Richmond, Va., deputy police chief Diane Bray to ruin Kay's career as well as that of Kay's old friend, Capt. Pete Marino. Then there's the wild rage at life that's consuming Kay's niece, a DEA agent. Finally the plot wire that binds the sometimes scattered plot there are the mutilation killings by the French serial killer self-styled "Loup-Garou" werewolf. The forensic sequences boom with authority; the brief action sequences explode on the page in the finale, overbearingly so; the interplay between Kay and Marino is boisterous as always, and there's an atmospheric sidetrip to Paris and an affecting romantic misadventure for lonely Kay. A thunderhead of disquietude hangs over this compulsively readable novel, sometimes loosing storms of suspense; but to Cornwell's considerable credit, the unease arises ultimately not from the steady potential for violence, but from a more profound horror: the vulnerability of a good woman like Kay to a world beset by the corrupt, the cruel, the demonic. One million first printing; $750,000 ad/promo; Literary Guild, Doubleday Book Club and Mystery Guild main selections; unabridged and abridged audio versions; foreign rights sold in eight countries. (July) Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information. -- PUBLISHERS WEEKLY.

Author Information

Bio of Patricia Cornwell

Patricia Cornwell is an award-winning novelist whose books have consistently appeared on the New York Times bestseller list. Cornwell was born in Florida in 1956. When she was nine years old, her mother tried to give her and her two brothers to evangelist Billy Graham and his wife to care for. For a while the children lived with missionaries since their mother was unable to care for them. Cornwell was a police reporter for The Charlotte Observer and worked in the chief medical examiner's office in Richmond, Virginia, for six years as a computer analyst. She also volunteered to ride with the police during homicide investigations. While working for the medical examiner, she began to write novels. Although the award-winning novel Postmortem was initially rejected by seven different publishers, once it was published it became the only novel ever to win the Edgar, Creasey, Anthony, and Macavity awards, and the French Prix du Roman d'Adventure, in one year. She is also the only woman in the United States to receive England's most prestigious crime-writing award, the Gold Dagger. Cornwell's novels are both national and international bestsellers. They have been translated into several foreign languages. Some of her novels are Body of Evidence, All That Remains, Cruel & Unusual, The Body Farm, From Potter's Field, Unnatural Exposure, Hornet's Nest, and A Time for Remembering, a biography of Ruth Bell Graham, the wife of Billy Graham.

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Additional Info

Imprint

Penguin Group E-Books

Filesize

716.15 KB

Number of Pages

464

eBook ISBN

9780786525980

Awards

• Listen Up Awards