Rating: 
Summary: A time wasting excercise!
Review: This is my first (and last ) Patricia Cornwell read. A trio of policemen and women try to clean up a Southern town populated by psycopaths and rednecks.The characters are completely overdrawn to the point of caricatures.It could possibly be turned into an amusing B-grade movie at best!
Rating: 
Summary: Great Pace!
Review: The story about how a female Chief of Police in Richmond deals with a new crime epidemic was very gripping. The humor was well-timed and appropriate and the concept was timely. Some of the names used for characters were a little sophmoric, but it is an enjoyable read on the whole.
Rating: 
Summary: southern silly
Review: This is a poor book. Cornwell has no understanding of Policemen, the south or COMSTAT as used in New York City. The effort at comic relief is silly and not funny in the least. Patty Passman and Lelia Ehrhart are perfect examples. This book is just a shameless ploy to make money.
Rating:
Summary: Its OK
Review: Judy hammer, police chief, tries to clean up Richmond, Va., and reorganize the computer system. I like these people but it took me a while to like the book. Murder, compassion, romance, even pets. Some really evil people brings out the rage in the reader. The book comes together very good in the end
Rating:
Summary: Southern Cross
Review: I should have checked the customer reviews prior to buying this poorly written book. The Dog was a dog, and this seems to be going the same way. So, after 50 pages I will put it out for the birds to use and not even waste my time. Thanks for your good words readers.....bet I'll check here next time.
Jack from Key West
Rating:
Summary: Not one of her best!
Review: After reading all of the Kay Scarpetta novels, I was NOT impressed with this one. I purchased it thinking it was part of that series and it wasn't. I was very disappointed in the writing style of this one!
Rating:
Summary: Not her best.
Review: As with the other reviews listed here, I have to agree that this is not Cornwell's best. I enjoy most of her Kay Scarpetta books much more. There was some humor in the book, and Weed's character was amusing and believeable. If you have other books you want to read, put them on top of this one.
Rating: 
Summary: Hard to get into.
Review: Patricia Cornwell was highly recommended to me by a friend and after hearing so much about her I picked up this book as an intro. Well...it took me about 3 weeks to finish because it just didn't grasp my attention. So many characters in the story I had to keep going back and figuring out who was who. It was humorous at some points and entertaining but I expected a little more suspense I guess. It gets interesting towards the very end, couldn't wait to see what happened and couldn't wait to finish this book and pick up a Scarpetta series instead.
I'll definately give her another try but would only suggest this story as a pastime if you've really got nothing else to read.
Rating:
Summary: Back In Time
Review: I read the entire book without really understanding it until I read these reviews. I think the author needs to go back to Scarpetta and her friends, a much more believable and interesting group of characters.
Rating:
Summary: No resolution
Review: This novel had good characterization with believable characters. Even Lelia's atrocious use of English was believable. But - Brazil and West are so unobservant and sensitive (a jilted cop isn't going to check up on her rival? c'mon!) I have never met a cop yet who wouldn't pick up something that interested him and read it, so the little touch of the florist's card was good - but unbelievable.Except for the disposition of the artist Weed, there was no resolution to any of the mysteries posed within these pages. There is a gang, whose members were captured, but there is never any notation of 'proof of guilt' (although the reader knows it exists). The gang was responsible for murder, robbery, armed robbery, burglary, enslavement, and defacing a cemetary, but this is all apparently irrelevant to the fact that they might hurt someone (Chief Hammer) at a parade. The web page was stupid but as a parody it works. My overall greatest objection was the characterization of the black police officer as overly sensitive to what he perceives as race-based slights. Also, no one could really be as stupid as Bubba, could they? Until I read a review here, I did not realize this was supposedly a satire, but even so it left me dissatisfied. A difficult read.
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