Rating: 
Summary: Not one of her best
Review: Having read everything Patricia Cornwell has written so far, and being a huge fan of hers, it saddens me to have to give a less than excellent review. I was disappointed that so much of this novel focuses on Scarpetta's grief. I always enjoyed reading Cornwell's books for the action and interesting plot twists. While this book has some action and some interesting points, it also focused on grief and anger entirely too much to make it an enjoyable read.
Rating:
Summary: Not "up to par"....
Review: and I kept "wanting" it to get better throughout the book. I have read almost all of Patricia Cornwell's books and was really let down by Black Notice. It seemed that main character "Kay Scarpetta" never got over her past adventures from previous books......death of her lover, arguments with her niece, invasions of her computer system, break-ins at her house....etc. I felt like I was revisiting some of the other Cromwell books about Kay Scarpetta. I felt the story was too envolved with irrelevant situations that took away from a basically good story.....I hope Kay Scarpetta can get her self together in her next adventure.....
Rating: 
Summary: Black Notice
Review: I was very disappointed in this book because of its vulgar language!
Rating: 
Summary: Black Notice
Review: I WAS a big fan but I am not anymore. What happened to the ending? Did the publisher say you couldn't go over 470 pages? You could've left out the sex-that was totally unnessasary and you got alittle too technical on the medical-we're not reading a JAMA artical here. I wanted Loup-Garou to pick up Lucy's gun and end all their misery! I'm tried of the bickering, the overprotective aunt, the unwarrented sex, the omnipotent Dr Scarpetta. I hope in the "Last Precinct" it is the end and Kay either retires or gets killed. Patricia Cornwell needs to move on-she's pushed this character too far and me too.
Rating:
Summary: Cornwell Still Clogging
Review: After I read her last book, Point of Origin, I was hesitant in buying into Ms. Cornwell again. Being optimistic, I bit for this one. And it did not bite back. In fact it gummed me to death. Did anyone else find the dialogue so cluttered a dustbuster couldn't clear it up? I do not like to *dis* any book or any author, they do something I cannot--write. However, in good faith, I cannot recommend Black Notice due to poor plot, dialogue, & frustrating folly.other reading suggestions: "Bleeding Out" by Baxter Clare, "Ashes To Ashes" by Tami Hoag, and "Manhattan Is My Beat" by Jeffrey Deaver Thanks for your interest & comment vote--CDS
Rating:
Summary: Disappointing!
Review: Cornwell's lead detective 'Marino' is particularly irritating in this book if not altogether overbearing; Scarpetta's relationships are prematurely intense so as to be unbelievable; an anticlimactic ending....
Rating:
Summary: Black Notice is Ersatz Cornwell
Review: Cornwell's latest Kate Scarpetta crime novel, Black Notice, is so bad one would like to think it was a parody or perhaps written by an untalented Cornwell doppelganger from a parallel universe. The usual characters are there: Virginia CME Kate Scarpetta, her lesbian niece, Lucy (now working undercover for the ATF), and Richmond Police Captain Pete Marino. But they are not themselves. Marino's behavior is so erratic and clownish he is no longer believable as a smart chief detective. Scarpetta's emotional strum und drang is deafening; rage, grief, remorse, and fear played at an unremitting triple forte. Lucy's chronic case of attitude seems to have turned into something darker. The spirit of FBI profiler Benton Wesley, a stalwart in earlier Cornwell books, looms over Black Notice like the ghost in Hamlet. Perhaps his death has driven his friends mad. The book opens with a US Senator delivering a posthumous farewell letter to Scarpetta from Wesley which concludes, "I ask you to do one thing for me to celebrate a life we've had that I know will never end. Call Marino and Lucy. Invite them over for dinner tonight. Cook one of your famous meals for them and save a place for me". This last supper takes place, but it can't transubstantiate dross into a satisfying novel. And Wesley, despite hints to the contrary, does not rise from the dead. Besides the loss of her sometime lover, Kate has to deal with mysterious subversion in her office, a serial killer who calls himself "the werewolf", and a new female Deputy Chief of Police who does a pretty fair impression of one. Lucy is trying to shut down a gun-smuggling operation in Florida. AND IT'S ALL CONNECTED! No wonder everyone is parnoid. Even the US Senator says darkly (as well as tritely) that he has received "veiled threats" about his friendship with Scarpetta. Cornwell's ear for dialogue has turned to tin. Her characters either lapse into stilted banalities, as in the scene between Kate and the Senator, or else they emote endlessly and operatically at one another. Marino tells off Lucy, Scarpetta tells off Lucy. Scarpetta tells off an employee. Marino tells off his boss. Scarpetta and Marino tell off each other ad nauseum. Even minor characters speak unplausibly. Kate and Marino are summoned to Interpol headquarters in France because of their werewolf (loup garou) investigation. There Secretary General Mirot, "an imposing, gray-haired man" uses the American slang, "not hardly", and his assistant, cosmopolitan, Harvard- educated hunk Jay Talley, says "Kate, we need you to prove..." Are we in Lyon, Toto, or Kansas? The plot has its share of unplausibility too. The reader is asked to believe that only the dysfunctional duo from Richmond can help Interpol solve a sticky crime conspiracy of its own in France. It seems that the CME of France will only pass on evidence (illegally) about the French loup garou murders to Kate, whom she met once at a coference years before. To strain our credulity even further, it turns out that Dr Stvan, the CME, has had a close encounter with the werewolf herself. Maintaining the symmetry, Kate tells off the hunk Talley. Then they leap into bed. It is a short leap from there back to Richmond where all the plot threads are wound up in hurried fashion. It is only fair to report that the forensic details in Black Notice are as intricate and interesting as in past Cornwell books, but contribute little or nothing to solving the case. And you can't hang out in the lab forever. Sooner or later you have to come out and face those crazy people who used to be your favorite forensic-procedure detectives.
Rating:
Summary: An exercise in plot cliches
Review: I confess to having not read any earlier examples of the Kay S. series, but after this novel I am disinclined to try. The plot is so predictable it makes an epsode of the A-team look like Dickens, and the CME herself is a woeful example of author wish-fulfillment. There is no element of mystery in the entire book, except perhaps to wonder why anyone bothered to cut down the required trees. The characters frequent boozy flights of self-examination verge on humorous, other than that watch the worst TV detective show you can find.
Rating:
Summary: Seemed "off" and poorly edited
Review: Did anyone find that the regular characters didn't seem to be "in character"? They all seemed to be cruder and less subtle than in the past. Perhaps it's all that curt dialogue. Much less of those seductive details and descriptions of place and people and food and clothes that say so much about Kay's emotional state. Also, it is missing connections. How did Kay and Marino decide that Bray was involved in the Kay's bogus email and chats? How come the chat was called Dear Chief Kay and later Kay tells Bray that is called Dear Dr. Kay? In the effort to create a new nemesis for Kay, how could have such a totally ridiculous character like Bray be promoted to such a prominent position? But then, I won't get into Cornwell's underlying premise in her books, that women in power are worse than men.... Of course, all this didn't keep me from compulsively reading the book, like all her others.
Rating:
Summary: Dark, dreary, disorganized and way below par
Review: I've loved most of the Kay Scarpetta series, but this is a poor offering. It reads as though someone had forced Cornwell to write this while in an extremely bad mood. Ever since Cornwell became disillusioned with the FBI, neither Scarpetta nor Lucy has had the same fire. (And Benton, of course, had to be killed off.)
The tone of the book is gloomy and bitter. There is none of the thrill or dark humor of previous books, and even the autopsy scenes are dull and distracted. The book reads as though the intriguing and slightly surreal first half was written by Cornwell, then a pedestrian ending was slapped on as an afterthought by another less talented writer.
The plot revolves around a serial killer with odd physical characteristics, and his deformity is an ugly and unnecessary complication; it has nothing to do with his motives or with solving the crime. Come to think of it, nothing in the book really works toward solving the crime -- the murderer literally shows up at Scarpetta's front door. (If you think I've spoiled the ending, don't worry -- you'll see this coming for several chapters). The most interesting new character, a semi-villainous police chief who would have made an interesting foil for Scarpetta, is gone by the end of the book.
The Scarpetta character is more than usually self-involved and MarthaStewart-ish, detailing hotel decor and pasta recipes while plot holes go unaddressed. Marino is more oafish than ever, and Lucy comes across as a spoiled, selfish brat. Even the doctor's colleagues seem weary of her.
I've always liked that Scarpetta was an imperfect heroine -- selfish, a bit patronizing, and slavishly class-conscious. In this case, however, her faults and her maladjusted grieving for Benton don't make her more human. They make her a real pain in the neck. I hope that by the next book Cornwell gives Scarpetta her life back.
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