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Summary: What do fires, pyschos, and lesbians have in common?
Review: This was my first Patricia Cornwell book, and I should have read Body Farm first. The characters and plotline are a carryover from Body Farm. The book was a quick read, and for the most part, the action intrigued me. The autopsy details were fascinating. However, the ending was unrealistic and dissappointing. I cannot believe the psycho killer could possibly get into the head of Kay Scarpetta and anticipate her every move. There were also some unanswered questions that left me unsatisfied. I did appreciate most of the locale, however, since I have been to most of the sites.
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Summary: Excellent, a real page turner!
Review: I have not finished reading this book but it is excellent. I am on page 188 already though after 3 days. Patricia Cornwell is a excellent author. I have read many other books by her. I recommend this book highly and others.
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Summary: Still A Fun Read!
Review: In some ways, I have to agree with some reviewer that Ms. Cornwell is loosing a little of her touch. But not to the point that this is an awful book or that I'm going to stop reading her Scarpetta series. I have to admit that I did stop reading her for awhile, but not because I didn't like the series. I just got into other series and had to "catch up" in them. First off, one should never just jump into the middle of a series. This series is the number one reason for not doing that. Ms. Cornwell has always left story lines open for the next book. That is part of the fun of her books. It makes you hungry for the next book. I love reading several in a row; the flow from one book to the next is incredible. I think that is another reason why I got behind in this series. So if you want to read Ms. Cornwell, take some money out of savings or eat beans for a week or so and get them all. Stack them in order by your favorite reading spot and start in on them. They are just like potato chips, can't stop with just one. Enough said about the series, on to this one book. I thought "Point Of Origin" was an excellent book. I enjoyed reading it very much. I ran the gamut of emotions through out this book. You know that it takes a tight well-written book to make a reader feel for the characters. Ms. Cornwell makes you feel her character's emotions very well. This book reminds me of a "wrap up" book. Ms. Cornwell is closing some chapters in her character's lives. Things change in life and so does the characters in this series. As the main plot goes, Ms. Cornwell moves it at very fast clipped pace. As thrillers should written. No fat in this book, it is just lean, trim and fit. She does a wonderful job of tying this book and Unnatural Exposure together. After I read Unnatural Exposure, I Thought, "wait a minute, what about this other part of the plot"? (Don't want to give anything away.) Well, I found out about it. Ms. Cornwell does a great job of telling you what you need to know and explaining it in terms that the average person can understand. I have fully enjoyed reading about Dr. Kay Scarpetta and her family and friends. I'm looking forward to taking on "Black Notice". I'll let you know if I like that one too. So hope you enjoy this wonderful series, by one of America's best writers.
Rating: 
Summary: A vast disappointment from Cornwell
Review: Patricia Cornwell's books have been falling off in quality over time, but the drop here is particularly steep. Part of the problem is her always haphazard plotting -- half of the problems and red herrings thrown up here never get explained. But her prose -- so alive and vibrant in those early books -- has become choked with cliches, so embarrassing to read that you wonder whether she's even assigned an editor nowadays. As for Scarpetta herself, well, Cornwell must suffer the most extreme case of 'I love my character' since Dorothy L Sayers. Kay Scarpetta isn't a character anymore, she's a Superhero: omnipotent, with Godlike wisdom, telling us all What's Wrong With The World. Lucy continues her decline from a sympathetic character to Wronged Genius Who Can Do Anything. She desperately needs killing off. Avoid at all costs and go back to those marvellous early books instead.
Rating: 
Summary: Point of Origin needs a destination!
Review: My first ( and probably last ) Cornwell novel. I mean, come on. First a big fire, affecting Kenneth Sparkes, who is quickly made a minor character. A bunch of horses die, but one survives, why? Never explained. The bad guy appears almost as an afterthought. And the scary "Carrie" doesn't even get any facetime with Scarpetta! After all that worrying. And her niece, Lucy, belongs in a superhero comic book; FBI/ATF agent, Computer genius, Helicopter pilot, foxy woman. Yeah, right. I think Cornwell wrote this book as she was taking flying lesson, since the helicopter seems to be the main ( and most believable ) character. Great dialog, weak plot, boring details, messy ending.
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Summary: Sorry, but this is my last Cornwell book
Review: The charcaters in a series should bring some consistency from one installment to another. The protagonist in this series, Dr. Kay Scarpetta, has degenerated into a paranoid BORING one dimensional irrational person. Her behaviors are simply not believable. A person who thinks and acts this way could not hold a job as a mortician, let alone a state's Chief Medical Examiner. This book was a struggle to work through. Its plot contrivances seemed to be thought up on the fly and slapped into the manuscript. At times, I was wondering if the author simply grabbed an old character (The evil Carrie) and tried to re-work her for the sake of meeting some kind of publishing requirement. I could never really get "into" the story...whenever I was slipping into the fictional world created by the author, the sloppiness or preposterousness of that world jarred me back into my own. A true disappointment and the last Cornwell book I'll ever read.
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Summary: Scarpetta books are getting harder to read.
Review: I just discovered this series a few years ago. I enjoyed the first few books immensely and thought Cornwell had a good series started. However, I took a long hiatus from the series before picking up this particular book. I find the protagonist hard to relate to and the Lucy storyline not relevant to the plot in any way. I have to agree with some other reviewers when they said this would have been a good place to end the series. I will continue to read the series for now, but am finding them increasingly harder and harder to get into.
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Summary: Deep
Review: I found this book to be much better than unatural exposure. I agree with the reader who stated that the Kay novels should end at this point. Point got a little more personal than Unatural did. There are definetly more issues to deal with personally. I agree with the fact that Pat did not embelish on the foal or the actual point of origin. I am inspired to read the previous Kay novels, to really get a feel for Unatural and Point.
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Summary: A thriller or a soapbox? In either case - disappointing!
Review: After reading this book, I am ashamed to say I was once a Cornwell fan who read all of the previous eight books out of the 'Scarpetta series' and even liked most of them. Besides being severely underdeveloped, unfinished and confused, my biggest disappointment is the fact that this book makes it painfully obvious Mrs. Cornwell has lost all of her regard for the reader and has stooped to preaching quasi-tolerance (i.e. Lucy) and feminism in a way that has to offend, if not the reader, than at least his or her intelligence. At first I loved the fact that Kay is a highly-successful, highly paid, self-sufficient professional woman, who knows what she wants and is aware of the sacrifices she has to make in order to get it. She is ambitious but makes no excuses for it, she is strong, but still feminine, and even though she doesn't really have a life, that doesn't mean she is cold or uncapable of love. Now, one would think that after eight books we have established all that. And we have. Except Mrs. Cornwell seems to think of her readers as mental equivalents of an average five-year-old, so she finds it necessary to spend pages and pages on tedious descriptions of Kay's house and car and paintings and whatnots, losing herself in boring detail and succeeding only in making Kay grow more and more unsympathetic and self-involved in each new book. Practically her only redeeming quality, and the only one that made Kay uniuqely human despite all of her growing self-righteousness and moralism, was Benton Wesley. So, when Mrs. Cornwell gets rid of a main male character - the only even remotely realistic male in the entire nine-book series - in such a silly and unoriginal, although disturbingly frightening (it's nice to see Mrs. Cornwell at least has not lost her touch there) manner, it seems a bit of an overkill. What bothers me most about it, however, is the underlying message that Kay could not be a feminist example if she was married, or she allowed herself the luxury of loving and being loved. What next?! Do yourselves a favor, folks, and if you have to go Cornwell, pick up one of her earlier Scarpetta books, or you'll be left none the wiser and with an extremely bitter taste in your mouth!
Rating:
Summary: disappointing
Review: I have read most of Ms. Cornwell's novels and was sadly disappointed in this one. While I usually enjoy the scientific detail in her books, I found this one tedious and hard to follow. I didn't even shed a tear over you-know-who! At any rate, hopefully the next one will be better!
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