Publisher's Weekly Review
It's like a splash of cold water on a hot day to be plunged, after the irritating third-person satire of Cornwell's last novel, Southern Cross (1998), back into the bracing narration of medical examiner Kay Scarpetta. As in the nine Scarpettas past (Point of Origin, etc.), here it's not the novel's events, startling as they are, that propel the story so much as the deep-hearted responses of Kay, as real a hero as any in thriller fiction, to the "evil"Äher wordÄthat threatens. Evil wears several faces here, from petty to monstrous. Most insidious is the office sabotageÄinsubordination, thefts, fraudulent e-mailsÄthat's making the grieving Kay look as if she's lost her grip since her lover's murder in Point of Origin. More destructive are the overt attempts by calculating Richmond, Va., deputy police chief Diane Bray to ruin Kay's career as well as that of Kay's old friend, Capt. Pete Marino. Then there's the wild rage at life that's consuming Kay's niece, a DEA agent. FinallyÄthe plot wire that binds the sometimes scattered plotÄthere are the mutilation killings by the French serial killer self-styled "Loup-Garou"Äwerewolf. The forensic sequences boom with authority; the brief action sequences explode on the pageÄin the finale, overbearingly so; the interplay between Kay and Marino is boisterous as always, and there's an atmospheric sidetrip to Paris and an affecting romantic misadventure for lonely Kay. A thunderhead of disquietude hangs over this compulsively readable novel, sometimes loosing storms of suspense; but to Cornwell's considerable credit, the unease arises ultimately not from the steady potential for violence, but from a more profound horror: the vulnerability of a good woman like Kay to a world beset by the corrupt, the cruel, the demonic. One million first printing; $750,000 ad/promo; Literary Guild, Doubleday Book Club and Mystery Guild main selections; unabridged and abridged audio versions; foreign rights sold in eight countries. (July) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
Virginia Chief Medical Examiner Kay Scarpetta has never liked Christmas, and this year, when she's still mourning the death of her FBI lover Benton Wesley (Point of Origin, 1998), looks like her worst holiday season ever. While she can't identify or name the exact cause of death, the corpse found in a sealed shipping container aboard a cargo ship from Belgium is the least of her problems'even though Cornwell leads from strength by presenting one of her most extended (and unnerving) postmortems. Just as Scarpetta and her longtime police ally Capt. Pete Marino are running into industrial-strength flak from Richmond's new Deputy Chief, ambitious, manipulative Diane Bray, someone in Scarpetta's office is sabotaging her more underhandedly: a series of petty thefts is only the nuisance that finally awakens her to a fraud countermanding her orders and masquerading as her over the Internet. And her niece Lucy Farinelli, an agent working out of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms' Miami office, is undercover with a bunch of seriously bad people. The web of evil that binds all these plots together (think drug smuggling; think Interpol; think werewolves) isn't believable for a minute, but expertly mired in Scarpetta's fathomless professional battles, you won't have a minute to think about it till you've turned the last page. It's fascinating to watch Scarpetta and her supporting cast, instead of growing, like V.I. Warshawski, become more and more themselves, like Sherlock Holmes'especially in such a brilliantly paced adventure as this one. (1,000,000 first printing; Literary Guild/Mystery Guild main selection; $750,000 ad/promo)
Library Journal Review
Kay Scarpetta's on the case when the body of a stowaway is found in a sealed container on a ship arriving in Richmond from Belgium. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
