Rating: 
Summary: Boring
Review: If this is an example of where the author intends to take her readers, then I think I will get off the train here. I have read all of Ms Cornwell's books to date and have rarely been disappointed. This one, even though the main characters are interesting enough, just has no oomph! I read and read and waited for the story to start, and read some more until I realized I was at the end of the book and still waiting. I will certainly read the next Patricia Cornwell book. I know it has to be better than this one.
Rating:
Summary: Southern Cross
Review: I was very disappointed in this book. I love reading Patricia Cornwell and look forward to her next book. However, this was not up to her usual talent, and I really regretted reading the book. Most of all I regretted the money I spent on it.
Rating:
Summary: CAN YOU SPELL BAD!
Review: What a horrible book. Plus, my version had so many grammatical errors, I couldn't believe it. How did this poorly written book ever get published. Did the author or the publisher ever hear of "Spellcheck"? How about braincheck!In all fairness, I think Patricia Cornwell is a very good writer...I loved all her books up until this disaster!
Rating:
Summary: Simply not worth the effort...
Review: For those fans of Cornwell's brilliant Scarpetta series...i urge you to stay away from this book. This story doesn't evolve at all..just sort of plods along. The characters lack depth and the plot, well, I'm not even sure it makes sense. If it does make sense, it still is not interesting enough to make it even remotely worthwhile. Cornwell rarely disappoints, but falls flat here.
Rating: 
Summary: Best Book in a Long Time
Review: I have never read a book by Patricia Cornwell and this is my first, and I am sure it will be the first of many. Cornwell lives in Virginia and marviously brings out the local charicteristics in her book. The charicters are humerous and Cornwell describes them brilliantly. It is ironic that a few days ago the portrait of Robert E. Lee on the River Walk was burned by a vandal. This is the same situation that occured in the book when the statue of President Jefferson Davis was vandalized. Cornwell could not have been more correct in predictions of what would happen in this situation. I was very entertained by the book. I do not see why there are negative comments on here. I can see how the book would upset some (especially liberals and democrats), but even if you are upset, you should still be entertained by the book. If you do not like the book, then "Fluck" off.
Rating:
Summary: Nomination for Worst Book Ever Written
Review: I have read quite a few of Cornwell's books and really enjoyed them. This however is a very different story. In all honesty, I believe this is the worst book, bar none, that I have ever read. On a humorous note, my wife bought this for me as I recovered from surgery and I swear if I could have climbed out of bed and got rid of the darn thing I never would have finished it ! After a while it just kind of blended in with my pain from stitches and general nausea but I finally did plod through to the end. Brutal. Brutal. Brutal. My advice: Just say no. If you want a GREAT forensic book look for Kathy Reichs ...far better plot and character development than even the best of P.C.
Rating:
Summary: Baddddddddd!
Review: One of the worst books I have ever read. Was a big fan of Patricia Cornwell. Everyone who bought this should get their money back!
Rating:
Summary: Not what I had hoped for...
Review: I really enjoy Patricia Cornwell's other books, but was disappointed in this one. It was not, as suggested above, that I was unwilling to accept a new cast of characters; as a matter of fact, I enjoyed the characterizations of Hammer, West, Brazil, and a few of the other characters. Cornwell is a past master at letting you know the people she draws. What I admire about Cornwell's writing is the realism: the gritty details she presents and the sympathy with which she portrays her often unsympathetic characters. I found the plot of Southern Cross to be fragmented and scattered. Many of the characters seemed like ridiculous caricatures. I found it hard to "buy in." I assume that the presentation was intended to be sort of tongue-in-cheek, and I tried to read it in that light, but it really was not as enjoyable an experience as I have become accustomed to with Patricia Cornwell.
Rating: 
Summary: Not Your Usual Cornwell
Review: If you approach this book as the usual Cornwell tightly packed, grim crime story, then you will probably be disappointed and wonder what happened to the lucid Cornwell. If you are ready for a "tongue-in-cheek" Cornwell mixed with a little grimness, then you are ready for a good time. Butner Fluck? Cigarettes $11 dollars a pack? A web site with an address 10 lines long that uses Orrin Hatch for its initial entry? A cop named Fling who is a computer unteachable? A blue fish virus? For the first 50 pages, I was a little outraged and then began to go with the flow. The snips of reveiws in the front of the book made me wonder if those people had actually read the book. Hello, notice anything unusual? I guess serious Cornwell fans are fairly humorless. As I write this, her rating is only two stars from them.
Rating: 
Summary: This is not what I've come to expect from Cornwell...
Review: ...not by a long shot. When Joe Wambaugh started playing it for laughs, he lost me as a reader. There's a section where our hero is on her cell phone and a garbled crossover from someone else's call makes her think a hate crime is being planned, when actually it's just a couple of hunters making plans. Not only that, one of these guys has an embarrassing name that's been passed down through several generations (you'd think one of his ancestors would have gotten the point a long time ago). All the bad jokes make the story line disjointed and muddled. The only redeeming factor here is that the main character is pure Cornwell--a strong female character who concentrates on her profession rather than gender politics. Chief Judy Hammer is a brass level cop who's so competent that she was brought in from the outside to straighten out a dysfunctional police force. Kind of like Cornwell's main hero Kay Scarpetta from most of her other books, an M.E. who's good enough to run a whole state's forensic pathology unit. I only hope this book isn't "The New Cornwell", where she ends up casting Scarpetta in stories that are a mix of "Diagnosis: Murder" and "Police Academy". I enjoy non sequitur humor as much as anyone else, but I began reading Cornwell's stuff for the same reason I read Wambaugh a generation ago--to get good crime stories.
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