Blow Fly: A Scarpetta Novel

Rating:
Summary: Better than Trace
Review: I don't know why people write these boorriiinngg synopsis of books, do you really want to know the WHOLE story before you read the book. Some of these reviews give up the entire book; some are as long as the book itself. Anyway, this is an average Scarpetta book, it's taunt and I liked the Louisiana locations. This is a better book than Cornwell's current book Trace. If you have not read Cornwell's Scarpetta books before, I urge you to start at the beginning, they are the better books, plus the series builds on itself.

Rating:
Summary: Not one of her best
Review: I've always enjoyed the Scarpetta books but this one was definitely not one of the best. The plot was somewhat predictable. Benton's being alive was actually not surprising, or even interesting.

Patricia Cornwell has become a victim of her own success and has lost her originality as she churns out boiler-plate stories.

Rating:
Summary: Cringeworthy
Review: The preceeding reviews did a thorough job covering the plethora of issues with this novel, so I won't belabor the specifics already noted. Speaking as a long-time reader of the Scarpetta novels, this was a huge disappointment. Speaking as a writer, this book was embarrassing. I must disagree with the posting that claimed to feel the presence of a heavy-handed editor; I frequently threw down the book to irritate my husband with rants that started with "where was the editor?!"

The characters were out of character. The plot was implausible at best, incomprehensible at worst. I swear some of the content was lifted directly from the "don't" section of a style manual. ("He sat in a chair that was padded." Not just badly written - this one wasn't even relevant to the scene.)

For readers that turn to Cornwell and Scarpetta for a pleasantly reliable reading experience (I say "reliable" because it's more polite that formulaic), this one does not deliver.

Bottom line for the story: Readers love Scarpetta for a reason, and you can't take the medical examiner out of the morgue.

Bottom line overall: It read like the first draft of what could have been a good book.


Rating:
Summary: A Man on Death Row in Texas Summons Dr. K. Scarpetta -
Review: This novel has enough intrigue and mystery to hold the interest of any avid reader who enjoys a good chase for clues, a lot of investigative work that takes a person to Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Boston, Mass, and Szczecin, Poland, with hints of romance that *could* rekindle from the past, and getting to know the inner workings of a weird twisted mind, the mind of a mass murderer. I have never read a Dr. Kay Scarpetta novel before, therefore I came with an open mind. I really liked this book. It had me reading from cover to cover at one sitting. I was unable to put it down. I expected a lot more gore and description of crime scenes. I was grateful this was done minimally, just enough to let you know it was a 'murder mystery' book. The plot thickens as Dr. Kay Scarpetta's neice, Lucy Farinelli and her partner, Zach, visit a crooked lawyer in Poland who is related to the murder case in Louisiana. They change the dynamics of the investigation through a well planned event they engineered ... except they failed to consider certain tell-tale clues, which could come back to haunt them. I love the way the author writes in a nonlinear fashion, mixing places and events from chapter to chapter, so that you *want* to keep reading ... to discover who the characters are and how they interact to reveal the mysteries woven into the story. This novel is really a work of art ... I recommend it whole heartedly. Erika Borsos (erikab93)