Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ

The Scarpetta series has been getting more unreal, and paranoid for the last few years. The details used to be fascinating in their realism, not tiresome. It's become like a superhero comic, peopled by 2 dimensional cardboard characters.

Scarpetta is an ME, but she increasingly comes off like a head of state in the Cold War, targeted by evil powers the world over (who continually die, and come back to life in the next book, like a 1930s children's adventure serial).

Lucy is a stunningly beautiful genius, a child prodigy, inventor, multimillionaire, ace pilot, computer hacker, and obnoxious sociopath. Marino should be about 80, as if anyone who drank alcoholically, smoked, and ate pizza for 50 years would still be able to even walk at this stage, much less indefatigably gad about like Batman. Although I understand the concept of the suspension of disbelief, shouldn't they all be long past retirement by now? Benton is another ageless machine-like genius, all of them solving crimes, and fighting evil forces personally targeting their loved ones! If she'd titled it KAOS (like in Get Smart), at least we could've anticipated some laughs. Because it is, laughably, filled with James Bond/Maxwell Smart spy-gadgets a la "M."

Another minor quibble, Cornwell just cannot write convincingly of a heterosexual relationship. Describing Scarpetta & Benton Wesley's marriage usually wastes a chapter straining tediously to convince us of their overwhelming desire for each other, and it always comes off as stilted, unmoving, defensive, and almost pleading on Cornwell's part.

Approx. 25 years was a very good run, but the series is unlikely to ever return to form.

P.S. Her almost mandatory inclusion of animal torture/death scenarios has become gratuitous, and ill serves animal rights supporters, or the animals themselves, if that were her intention.