Rating: 
Summary: The Last Precinct
Review: Good plot but much to wordy and seems the author wishes to impress us with her knowledge which we certainly do acknowledge however just too much of a good thing!
Rating: 
Summary: A Waste of Time
Review: What a gigantic waste of time. The story isn't compelling; the plot doesn't resolve itself with clarity; the characters are shallow and unlikable. To make matters worse, the author portrays every male as sex-crazed, inherently evil, and shallow. Even the main character's male side kick is described as fat, slovenly, and shifty. The only surprise in this crime/mystery is that I actually finished it.
Rating:
Summary: The last Cornwell.
Review: My husband and I just finished THE LAST PRECINCT. We have now read all of the Kay Scarpetta books, and probably won't read any more of them. Patricia Cornwell has a real gift for orchestrating grisly plots, but nothing more. Her main characters all sound alike: stilted and sullen. Kay Scarpetta has built her life to order, and all she does is whine. In fact, no one ever smiles or laughs in these books. They ooze the determined, self-obsessed misery of folks who have never truly suffered a day in their lives. We held some hope for THE LAST PRECINCT because of the blurbs: "...takes readers deeper into Kay Scarpetta's heart and soul than ever before" . . . "'Where do you go when there is nowhere left?'" Could it be that Scarpetta would finally undergo the epiphany she so badly needs, and be forced to work her way through the chip on her shoulder? Nope. These characters age but they never grow. And we're just too depressed to care any more.
Rating: 
Summary: Scarpetta at her best
Review: Kay Scarpetta has really been put through the wringer in this one! The reader gets so involved that the plot twists and turns leave you gasping. This is the best Cornwell I have read and I can't wait to read the next one.
Rating:
Summary: STINKS
Review: I am disappointed. I loved Patricia Cornwell's earlier books and was a big fan. I thought it was just getting off to a slow start and thought I should give The Last Precinct the benefit of the doubt. Well, by the time I made it through chapters 6 and 7, I just couldn't stomach any more of her "Therapy". Maybe it got better after that but I felt I couldn't waste more time to find out. To sum it up, I am glad I got it at the library instead of wasting my money. What happened, Patricia Cornwell?!?!?!
Rating: 
Summary: Much, much better...Cornwell's best story in a long while!
Review: I tend to read what other reviewers say especially when their opinions differ from my own, and I want to know why. When I went to get something 'good' to read (usually means a mystery to get my mind off of my daily grind), Cornwell's book was on the number 1 reading list for almost all of the major media. Since most of the reviews written on Amazon.com are predominantly negative...this presents a conundrum. Are the reviewers wrong or are all the people who are purchasing and reading this book wrong?
Granted, Cornwell's protagonist has been getting 'stale'. As is typical with long-running series the author seems to be having problems with making her plots and characters diverse enough to please everyone. After her last book in this series, I wasn't sure I was going to read her again. But I figured all those people buying this very thick addition to her series couldn't all be wrong. I was pleasantly surprised to see that I was right. Cornwell seems to have gotten a second 'literary wind' and the book makes for good reading. A lot of loose ends are tied up in this chapter of Scarpetta's life, with the truth about Benton's death finally coming to some type of conclusion. I have yet to read a mystery series where at some point, both the author and the protagonist runs out of 'gas', and where the stories do not seem to be familiar or lack the excitement of the first few books in the series. Even Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes had major problems at the end...Doyle tried without much luck to get rid of his alter ego/protagonist, but ended up having to ressurect him because of the outcry. The same thing happened when Cornwell tried writing a book considerably different from her usual. Readers and critics cannot have it both ways, and perhaps they should cut Cornwell some slack?
Cornwell still has brought the genre one of its best and most interesting protagonists. Her writing and the intelligence of her plots are still way above par, and she deserves recognition for teaching the public about a field of expertise that was not well-developed prior to Scarpetta's entrance on the scene (forensic science). ....
Rating: 
Summary: The Last Precinct Disappoints
Review: I was very disappointed in The Last Precinct, which takes up right where Black Notice leaves off. The "Werewolf" killer, Jean-Baptiste Chandonne, who made his grisly debut in Black Notice, is one of Cornwell's more memorable villains besides Temple Gault, so I expected this book to keep me turning pages into the wee hours. Instead, The Last Precinct was a major let-down. For one thing, Cornwell inexplicably changed her writing style in this novel to present tense narrative and it doesn't work. Instead, it makes for slow, tedious reading. I was also disappointed that there seemed to be a lot of back-tracking and rehashing of Point of Origin and Black Notice. In addition, while the many passages of self-analysis and introspection reveal more of Scarpetta the person, they contribute to the book's excruciatingly slow pace. For instance, because her home has become a crime scene, Scarpetta stays with her friend, Dr. Anna Zenner, who conducts some informal psychotherapy sessions with her as part of the hospitality package. These sessions seem contrived and add nothing to the plot. Neither, for that matter, does Anna's letter revealing the mysterious details of her youth in Nazi Austria. In this book, Chandonne is extradited to New York City, as he is suspected of committing a gory murder there 2 years before Deputy Police Chief Diane Bray and Kim Luong are murdered; the M.O. in all 3 cases is identical. Enter New York District Attorney Jaime Berger, who has been appointed to prosecute the New York case and comes to Richmond to do some investigating. Berger clashes with Captain Pete Marino from the outset and faithful readers of the series know that he's a chauvinistic curmudgeon who resents women in positions of power/authority. In some of the previous books, Marino's diatribes and outbursts are actually kind of funny, but his constant sniping at Berger is just tiresome in this novel. There are also too many amazing coincidences and improbable plot twists. Turns out a mysterious, tall, handsome stranger, not Chandonne, was the last person the victim in New York was seen with before meeting her hideous end. Likewise, The Last Precinct now reveals that Marino's son Rocky is a ruthless, high-powered mob attorney who will be defending Chandonne in New York City. The Chandonnes, readers will recall, are a prominent crime family in Paris, with global mob connections. Somehow, Scarpetta becomes implicated in the murder of Diane Bray, who came to Virginia with the express intention of getting Scarpetta fired from her job (it's hinted she and Benton Wesley, Scarpetta's murdered lover, were romantically involved). Complicating the already-improbable plot is the revelation that Lucy, Scarpetta's brilliant but combative niece, is going to let the ATF kick her out and she's going into business with a friend, also a former ATF agent, in the Big Apple. The Last Precinct, their endeavor, is a private agency that provides justice for people who have exhausted all the normal avenues to get it (sounds something like Vengeance, Unlimited). Thrown in as afterthoughts are two murdered young men found tied up and burned with a heat gun in a sleazy motel, whose owner, we learn, is in the murder business with an unexpected cohort in crime (I won't ruin things by revealing his identity here). In the end, Scarpetta, after being vindicated in a really lame trial scene, decides a major change in her life is in order. I'm not certain if this book is Scarpetta's swan song or the author decided that the current format and setting were getting stale, necessitating a total overhaul. The Last Precinct isn't on a par with Patricia Cornwell's previous novels. For one thing, I didn't care for the different writing style, which made the book more difficult to read. For another, the book was about 100 pages too long. If Cornwell had eliminated all the introspective sidetrips and plot backtracking to previous works, the novel's flow would have been greatly improved. Finally, there were just too many unbelievable plot twists. I found the book to be disappointing and can only hope it was a temporary literary aberration on the author's part.
Rating:
Summary: Better that the last ones...but still boring.
Review: I have read all of Patricia Cornwell books, and since the last ones, i.e. Cause of Death, Point of Origin and Black Notice, were such a great disappointment (unlike the first ones), I think that, in a way, I enjoyed The Last Precinct. At least it did not make yawn in a wish to finish it, like her last ones. I agree with most of the readers, who say that Cornwell can and has done it much better. I do not know if I will buy the next Scarpetta novel, I think I have become tired of buying her next books in the hope that they will be better than the last ones. One last thing: why is Cornwell turning Marino into such an annoying character?
Rating:
Summary: Boring at Best
Review: Unlike the other books in the series, I found this book to be less interesting and boring at best. Nomally I fly through her books, this one took me almost a month to read through!
Rating:
Summary: overwhelming
Review: Having read all of Patricia Cornwell's novels and met her several times I waited quite awhile to read this one since the last two were so disappointing. It was worse than I had expected. The book is not fiction but Cornwell's version of autobiography. She has obviously come to identify herself so closely with Kay Scarpetta that she cannot help but pour out her feelings of victimization in the character's experiences. The original fictional accounts of experiences of the real Medical Examiner for Virginia, Marcella Fierro, were fabulous books. This book contains none of Dr. Fierro and only Cornwell's version of Hillary Clinton's public image - the mantra "I don't abuse power" when obviously she feeds on it describes the style of all of Cornwell's recent work.
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