Kay Scarpetta Series by Patricia Cornwell
Relax & read - mystery list descriptions do not reveal major plot points.

Character's Personality: Kay is sophisticated, melancholy, highly intelligent, driven, reserved, strong-willed, and a perfectionist.  She's a refined, aristocratic type.

Character's Occupation: Chief Medical Examiner for the Commonwealth of Virginia

Character's Culture / Ethnicity: Italian-American

Character - Other Notable Traits: Kay loves to cook

Location and Time Period: Contemporary Richmond, Virginia

Mystery Subgenre: Forensics mystery

Objectionable Material: Profanity, extreme violence

Other Supporting Characters:

• Benton Wesley – FBI profiler and lover to Kay
• Lucy – brilliant, lesbian, FBI-agent, niece to Kay.  Mercurial personality.
• Pete Marino – Homicide detective with Richmond police who works with Kay and feels unrequited love for her

Series Description: (brought to you by kat impatientreader.com) Kay Scarpetta is a forensics expert who solves murders that involve a lot of gritty, realistic, and extensive forensic details.  The murders themselves usually involve graphic, bizarre, serial-killer situations often from a psychopath who is personally out to get Kay Scarpetta.

Professional and amateur (e.g., Amazon) reviewers mostly regard the following books as a once brilliant series that crashed and burned at some point around Point of Origin (Book 9) or Black Notice (Book 10). The earlier books are written in first-person, past-tense in Kay Scarpetta's viewpoint and offer the complex and fascinating window into the life of a highly competent and driven woman who must fight unending political and professional battles within her male-dominated field.

Many say the series lost that compelling viewpoint from Blow Fly (Book 12) onwards because the viewpoint switched to third-person, present-tense and made Kay Scarpetta a more minor viewpoint among those of many others, including the villains. Other reviewers feel that important supporting characters such as Lucy and Pete Marino have devolved into caricatures. You be the judge.

Series List: Purple Copyright Date  = I've read it Title links go to Amazon.com product pages.

1. Postmortem (1990) - Anthony, Edgar, and Macavity Awards. Kay Scarpetta stands up to near-constant male chauvinism in her unusual profession as the chief medical officer / pathologist for the Commonwealth of Virginia.  Here she investigates a series of strangler murders of young women.
2. Body of Evidence (1991). Kay must investigate the stabbing death of a famous romance novelist.
3. All That Remains (1992). Kay investigates a series of murders that the FBI may be trying to cover up that involve young couples abducted from their cars.
4. Cruel and Unusual (1993). Kay must find out how the fingerprints found at the crime scene of a murdered psychic can belong to an executed criminal.  Meanwhile the media is invading her privacy and ruining her life.
5. The Body Farm (1994). An 11 year-old girl is murdered and Kay suspects a serial killer who has baffled the FBI for years.  She also must help niece Lucy, now an intern with the FBI who gets accused of a security violation.
6. From Potter's Field (1995). Kay alternates between Virginia and the subways of NYC as she hunts an old enemy, a serial killer who wants to make her his final victim.
7. Cause of Death (1996). Kay investigates the murder of a reporter and gets targeted for assassination by a vicious, fascist cult.
8. Unnatural Exposure (1996). Kay struggles with a creepy professional rival for her job at the same time that she gets stalked through the internet by a mass murderer / bioterrorist.
9. Point of Origin (1998). Kay gets stalked by a murderer who used to be niece Lucy's lover. Meanwhile she works a case involving a charred corpse at a horse ranch.
10. Black Notice (1999). When a strange corpse is found in a container ship, Kay and Pete Marino get called to France to investigate a serial killer who may be a werewolf.  Meanwhile, Lucy and her new lover are involved in a dangerous undercover operation in Miami.
11. The Last Precinct (2000). Viewpoint is 1st person, past-tense. Kay goes into therapy and is targeted by a corrupt police investigation. Meanwhile, Lucy leaves the FBI and joins a private investigation firm known as the Last Precinct.
12. Blow Fly (2003). Viewpoint is 3rd person, present-tense. Suffering extreme emotional distress, Kay retreats to Florida to try to recover. She gets asked to consult on a murder case involving a rich woman who overdosed in a cheap hotel.
13. Trace (2004). Viewpoint is 3rd person, present-tense. Kay returns to Virginia to help the loathsome and incompetent Joel Marcus, her replacement after she got fired, to solve a case involving a dead girl. Meanwhile a crazed criminal takes a personal interest in Kay.
14. Predator (2005). Viewpoint is 3rd person, present-tense. Kay takes a freelance case with the National Forensic Academy in Florida, an organization founded by niece Lucy. The case involves a serial killer profiled by the FBI and takes them to multiple locations.
15. Book of the Dead (2007) Viewpoint is 3rd person, present-tense.  Kay opens a private forensic lab in South Carolina, and is asked to solve the gruesome murder of a tennis star whose mutilated body is found in Rome, Italy.

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