Product Description

In From Potter's Field, #1 New York Times bestselling author Patricia Cornwell enters the chilling world of Virginia's Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Kay Scarpetta--and a bold, brilliant killer from her past.

Upon examining a dead woman found in snowbound Central Park, Scarpetta immediately recognizes the grisly work of Temple Brooks Gault. She soon realizes that Gault's murders are but a violent chain leading up to one ultimate kill--Scarpetta herself.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #21424 in Books
• Published on: 2005-08-30
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 384 pages

Amazon.com Review
Upon examining a dead woman found in snowbound Central Park, Kay Scarpetta immediately recognizes the grisly work of Temple Gault, a bold and brilliant killer from her past. Now she must hunt down a psychopath whose string of horrible murders is leading inexorably to his ultimate prey: Scarpetta herself. Even with the help of the FBI, Scarpetta knows the endgame is hers alone to play -- and it will be played on Gault's home turf, the subway tunnels beneath New York City.

From Publishers Weekly
Chief Medical Examiner Kay Scarpetta plays a tense cat-and-mouse game with a serial killer, an old enemy, in her sixth outing (following The Body Farm), and he has her badly rattled. The story begins as a rotten Christmas for Scarpetta: Temple Gault has struck again, leaving a naked, apparently homeless girl shot in Central Park on Christmas Eve; Scarpetta, as the FBI's consulting pathologist, is called in. Later, a transit cop is found shot in a subway tunnel, and, back home in Richmond, Va., the body of a crooked local sheriff is delivered to Scarpetta's own morgue by the elusive, brilliant Gault. The normally unflappable Scarpetta finds herself hyperventilating and nearly shooting her own niece. In the end, some ingenious forensic detective work and a visit to the killer's agonized family set up a high-tech climax back in the New York subway, which Gault treats as the Phantom of the Opera did the sewers of Paris. There's something faintly unconvincing about Gault (in a competitive field, it's tough to create a really horrific serial killer), and Scarpetta, stuck with her own family troubles and involved in a rather glum affair with a colleague, seems to be running low on energy. Still, this is a compelling, fast-moving tale, written in a highly compressed style, and only readers who know that Cornwell can do better are likely to complain. Literary Guild, Doubleday Book Club and Mystery Guild selections.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
What a letdown! After the emotionally involving The Body Farm (LJ 9/1/94), Cornwell returns with a ludicrously convoluted plot involving the not very interesting serial killer Temple Brooks Gault, first seen in Cruel and Unusual (Scribner, 1993) and making a fleeting appearance in The Body Farm. The book opens on a snowy Christmas Eve in New York's Central Park with Gault standing over the body of his latest victim, sculpting a bloody snowball. When Dr. Kay Scarpetta, a consulting pathologist for the FBI, and her colleagues Wesley Benton and Pete Morino examine the unidentified nude woman, they recognize Gault's handiwork. Thus begins a long, tedious cat-and-mouse chase as Gault taunts Scarpetta by infiltrating CAIN, the FBI's artificial-intelligence system. The bodies and the gore pile up. Readers unfamiliar with the earlier books will find Cornwell's story confusing. Still, her books are popular, so there will be demand.
--Wilda Williams, "Library Journal"
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Customer Reviews

Cornwell can do better, and I know it!
I've been an ardent Patricia Cornwell fan, since I read the first of her books, Post Mortem, about two summers ago. Since then, I've been trying to get my hands on her books, in the order that she wrote them, so as to follow the character building that she's done for the Chief Medical Examiner of VA, Key Scarpetta, and her entourage including Det. Marino, Agent Wesley, and her niece Lucy.

However, this book left a bad after-taste in my mouth. The story moves at a very fast pace, but then that's about the only thing that is good about this book. Rest everything is about average. Sadly, Cornwell tries to inculcate fear of Gault in the reader's mind, but nothing much seems to happen to Scarpetta anyway, despite her working in what could very well be the least secure government offices in the world! Just about anyone can break in, at anytime, anyone can make anything disappear, anyone can crack any security protocol and encrypted passwords - one seems to wonder how's the place still standing!

It reminded me of those spoof teenage horror movies, where the favourite quip is "don't open that door...", or "someone was lurking in the shadows, and I was alone...". This book has one-too-many of such circumstances, and I for one found my interest wavering on each of those ocassions.

Forensics is the reason I took to reading her, but this book largely lacks in Forensic Science / Investigation. No foreign material, no strange residue, no inexplicable wound mark... nothing to intrigue the reader.

The climax is high-tech, but again a little lost on me.

P.S.: I'm still wondering WTH does it have to do with Potter's Field?

An average read: 2.5 / 5

Scarpetta rocks!
I love the Kay Scarpetta series, that's how I got hooked on the whole forensics stuff! Patricia Cornwell is an excellent author!

Central Park Murder
Here is a terrifying novel by Cornwell. Her knowledge of medicine and forensic science keeps you turning the page. A woman's body is found in the snow in Central Park. There is no question that the killer is one Temple Brooks Goult. Scarpetta discovers that his killings are a pattern with one ending. By Ruth Thompson author of "The Bluegrass Dream" and "Natchez Above The River"

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