Rating: 
Summary: Put a fork in it - its dead.
Review: Briefly - Patricia Cornwell has gotten so bored with her charcters in the Scarpetta saga that she can't even put together a coherent novel. This poor excuse for a story has minimal suspense, minimal charcter development, minimal plotting, and when all else fails, PC reverts to tell us all the so-called "techno" stuff regarding ammunition, helicopters, electronic communications. Where, oh where, is the forensic discussion and plotting to unlock the mystery? Oh, I forgot. There is no mystery, there is no plot, only PC's thinly disguised contempt for her charcters. Please let the series go and don't subject us to any more of this junk. BTW, if I could, I'd give this book a negative star rating of 5.
Rating:
Summary: lab rat reads again
Review: I agree with 95per cent of the reviews here. This book was very bad and I really did not want to give it one star. I no longer enjoy the Scarpetta books. The last one was pretty marginal also.
Rating:
Summary: "Please Don't Go there"...good advise..don't read this book~
Review: Please don't go there. The past is past." states District Attorney, Jaime Berger. What wonderful advise..don't waste your time on this book. "Blow Fly" is mainly a rehash of her previous books esp. "Last Precinct" with the characters obsessing with the past. I probably wouldn't have bought this book but it was a gift from a friend. I had a strong suspicion that Benson was not dead and this book confirmed it. The character (ADA Beger) that Ms. Crowmwell introduced in her last book and returned in this one nor the new character, Nic, were well developed at all. At one point, I believed that Nic had been abducted and kept waiting for confirmation/denial that came many chapters later. She (Kay) needs fresh, new characters and I hope to see her develop Nic into a series.I thought this book was pretty depressing i.e. using cute, helpless animals as alligator bait. I realize that most serial killers get their start tormenting animals and continue to sharpen their skills. The ending was an after-thought tying up loose ends which some remained untied. It seemed as if the author had a pressing appointment and needed to make her deadline.
Rating: 
Summary: Psycopathic nightmare
Review: I've read two Patricia Cornwell novels featuring Dr.Kay Scarpetta in a row and feel that the time has come to give all of her gruesome characters a rest..one CAN overdose on horror and bloodshed. Kay recieves a message that her nemesis, Jean-Baptists Chardonne, wants to see her while he is still on death row, awaiting execution.She is repulsed by the thought of having to meet this hair covered maniac who tried to kill her but can't resist trying to discover the secrets that only he knows about the criminal organisation which is wreaking such havoc in the world. She teams up with her old friend Detective Pete Marino and her niece Lucy, who heads up an Intelligence network and begins an investigation which leads deep into the swamps of Louisiana and even deeper into the horrifying depths of Chandonne's family.
Rating:
Summary: I don't believe she wrote it!
Review: I have read all the Scarpetta books and this is not one of them. This book is so full of pornographic dreck, that I cannot believe Patricia Cornwell wrote it. Possibly she wrote the half dozen or so short chapters (out of over 120!) in which Scarpetta is almost in character, but the rest? I truly believe she has a team of writers hacking away at ghosting, but who came up with the mindless non-plot? The real question is where are her editors? Do they think her readers would not notice?
Rating:
Summary: Just awful, and unnecessarily gruesome
Review: I was so excited another Kay Scarpetta book was coming out, and so disappointed when I read it. While past books have graphic details of autopsies, it was relevant to the storyline, but this book was just unnecessarily gruesome. They also figured out who the serial killer was in less than a page when this was supposed to be a difficult crime to solve. Way too convenient and a cop out. And why "Blowfly"? They mention a blow fly twice in the book, not even a relevant title. I don't like Kay as the FORMER Chief Medical Examiner. Her lack of confidence was not attractive nor true to the character. Now she's just bitter. Marino, while always a bit annoying, wasn't even the slightest bit likeable in this book. And I'm tired of hearing how perfect Lucy is with all her fancy equipment, when she's so obviously flawed and, like Marino, not even likeable. It took me more than a month to read this book. It normally takes 2 days to read a Scarpetta book because I can't put it down. I'm very disappointed with the ending and the fact the same old same old will be carried over to the next book. Don't know if I'll even bother.
Rating:
Summary: Shouldn't have bothered
Review: I gave up on the Scarpetta novels a couple of books ago, but my hairdresser gave me this so I got sucked in again. It was just awful: morose, depressing, characters were inconsistently or badly developed, pace way too slow until the ending when things resolved (and I use that word loosely) abruptly and with strange gaps. Where's the editor?
Rating:
Summary: One star is too generous for this book.
Review: After the enormous disappointment of the "Jack the Ripper" fiction fantasy in which we were treated to the author's own personal theories and conclusions as FACT (which they are not), I was really looking forward to seeing Scarpetta, Lucy and Marino back in action. But this book ... what a waste of time. I am officially done reading Ms. Cornwell and my signed copy of "Black Notice" will be going into a box with all the other junk I have no use for.
Rating: 
Summary: Good to see you Kay, even if it's not at your best...
Review: Either you like Kay Scarpetta and her world, or you don't. Don't gripe about how this book isn't as good as the previous ones. That is obvious enough. But it's nice to check in with Kay, to hear she is alive, depressed as usual, and not that well. When I don't see her for awhile, I miss her. I may even like Lucy and Marino better. But keep bringing Kay back! I want to see if she ever gets happy. And I like smart female characters.
Rating:
Summary: Maybe Patricia has an evil twin who preys on readers . . .
Review: Once again Cornwell brings us a slew of over-the-top characters, all of whom are prickly, selfish, amoral, irritating, paranoid, depressing, self-pitying and hateful to those closest to them - and that's just the good guys! It almost seems the author's running some kind of experiment. "How long will it take readers to figure out I'm putting them on?" Will anyone notice that the emperor is buck-naked? A wolf-man, his gorgeous twin, scions of a family that tries to (dare I say it?) rule the world, their lawyer who just happens to be the son of the determinedly obnoxious policeman who worships the brilliant but always persecuted Scarpetta who worships Superniece and on and on it goes. None of the relationships bear the slightest resemblance to any between real people or between any fictional characters you'd actually want to know. The whole thing reminded me of some gory comic book aimed at the lowest common denominator lurking in pre-teen boys. Or a child who's story gets more and more fantastic as he warms to the subject until he's exhausted the wildest limits of his imagination and winds down to the anti-climatic "and then the good guys killed the bad guys and that's the end." Would that it were so, but Wolfie's still out there (dang, it's easy to get out of prison these days) and he'll probably meet up with Frankenstein in the next book. I just hope one of them scares me away from the library before I fall for the "surely, the next one will be better" thing again.
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