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As I recounted in my review of the book after this, Predator, I checked that book out of the library thinking it might be the one about which I'd read a review saying that finally the Scarpetta series was improving again, but after realizing what a piece of tripe that work is, checked out this one instead, as I'd initially been going to do.

It started out more promising than Predator - for one thing, it began with an actual mystery! - but quickly got bogged down in Lucy's personal problems. Back when I used to voraciously read the Scarpetta series, I remember generally liking Lucy's character, but like so many of the main characters in this series, she has become less likable with age (or perhaps she'd still be likable if she were written in a better way). So many things bother me about the series now that didn't used to bug me, and I'm not sure whether they were always there and I just let them slide before because the books were generally well-written and fast-paced, or if the fact that the writing has gotten markedly worse includes these items. For one thing, in both Predator and this book, Cornwell is obsessed with "perfect" looking people, and the characters (and the narration) deride anyone that doesn't look like Cornwell's (and/or the characters') definition of "perfect." Personally I don't know a single actual real person that looks like what the books define as "perfect," and I find this obsession obnoxious.

Secondly, I'm finding Lucy's character extremely obnoxious now. In the span of two pages a bit through the book (about 100 pages in), she refers to one character as "the Hispanic" and to her father as "my crazy Latino biological father" while referring to her white mother as "Hopefully, not from my mother..." At this point, I simply lost all patience or sympathy with Lucy's character in this book, and lost even more respect for Cornwell. I can't imagine either Cornwell or Lucy saying, "the white" or "my crazy white biological mother" (indeed, her books now only cite race when the person is a person of color), but somehow it is OK to refer to a person solely or primarily by their race or ethnicity if they are a person of color. It would be different if it seemed like Cornwell was deliberately writing Lucy as a racist or Scarpetta as weight-obsessed (perhaps with an eating disorder?), but it seems that in Cornwell's new world of the novels, things like these are "just the way people act" and considered quite fine behavior.

Since Lucy's storyline makes up a huge part of this book (from what it seems so far), at this point I am trying to decide between skipping the sections with her (and the related plot with Benton and Lucy's girlfriend) and only reading the sections with Scarpetta and Marino, or just returning the book without even bothering to read the rest of it. After two disappointing books in a row, and incredibly sloppy writing, I don't believe I will be reading another Cornwell book. It's too bad, as her writing used to be gripping and I once liked the characters of Scarpetta, Benton, and Lucy (though I never was particularly fond of Marino, as was the case for many early fans).

[See my review of Predator for my evisceration of that horrendous book.:]