Kay Scarpetta is starting over with a unique private forensic pathology practice in Charleston, South Carolina. And the death of a sixteen-year-old tennis star will usher in a string of murders more baffling—and terrifying—than any that have come before.

Normally I find an author and read absolutely everything they've written.
However, I have found that Ms. Cornwell's writing has become increasingly depressing, and at an alarming rate.
With each new book, Ms. Cornwell has managed to drag every character, however peripheral, in Kay Scarpetta's infintesimal world further into a dysfunctional black hole. Each and every character should be on a ledge by now.
At least the victim is lucky enough to be tortured and killed off early in the storyline.

This book is very different from older Cornwell novels. She normally writes a first person, past tense narrative. This is written in an unusual third person, present tense. The characters in Book of the Dead are absolutely cartoonish in behavior and dialogue, unlike the more rational characters in previous books. I find it difficult to believe this is the same author. If this were my first Scarpetta Mystery, I would not read another.

I really wanted to give this book zero stars but they won't let you do that...

In looking back over the list of Scarpetta books, a series I fell in love with long ago, I find it difficult to remember the last one I enjoyed. The characters have no redeeming qualities anymore and are completely unlikeable.

I think it's sort of silly to continue coming back to them when this obviously is not going to change so I'll make this my last Scarpetta read. Cornwell would be better off killing them all spectacularly with no hope of resurrection so she could quit flogging them and move on to something else. Unless of course she's lost the muse. Hmmm, maybe that's the problem.

I too have never submitted a review but after discovering how bad it is I felt I just had to add my impression of this piece of work.

I agree with many of the complaints express on this site by other readers. I find it very choppy to the point of being frustrating with a rambling, poorly defined storyline. Cornwell just drops readers into conversations and situations with no set up at all. It is actually disorienting ...like when you walk in the middle of a conversation or event in real life. She also has many characters with few being very well developed and seemed to be short on coming up with creatively differing names. I found several characters were given very similar names that contributed to confusion.

What amazed me most are the sentence fragments. When I learned grammar I believe that one of the rules was: sentences had to contain a subject and a verb. I don't know, have they changed that rule? Is it a `creative writing' thing?

I also find this book boring and long on conversations that really don't seem to go anywhere but to express over and over again the character's (and perhaps the author's too) political views of which I could not care less.

The bio in the back of the book lists a number of awards the author has won, pointing out some very distinguished British awards never won by any other American author. If this is what they consider work worthy of such awards, then I question the awards.

Very interesting book. I never read any of her books before but this was definitely a book to read. The more i read the more i wanted to know what was going to happen next. Just great. You will not be dissapointed with this book.