Way Too Much Angst, Nowhere Near Enough Action
Amazon says:
Banes & Noble thinks:
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Author: Patricai Cornwell
Title: The Scarpetta Factor Genre: mystery Bobby Ewing was murdered on Dallas but was resurrected in a ham-handed "dream sequence" the next year; a television event that rivals the infamous "jump-the-shark" episode of Happy Days for small-screen hubris. Not to be outdone, mystery-thriller author Patricia Cornwell left signature character Kay Scarpetta bereft upon finding lover Benton Wesley's engraved Breitling watch amidst the ashes of a bomb site in 1998's Point of Origin; only to raise him from the dead after five years in Blow Fly. The reunited couple has since wed, moved to the northeast, and set up multiple psychiatric and pathology practices in Boston and New York... a real shuttle family. And yes, Lucy and Marino have tagged along, though Marino can only afford housing in NYC, and lacks a squat in Beantown. Billionaire Lucy can, of course, afford both... To keep busy while Ben (or is it Wes? I can never remember) toils at the McLean Institute; the Doc, as Marino calls Scarpetta, does pro bono autopsies for the NYC medical examiner and picks up pocket change as a forensics consultant to CNN. Guess that latter's how the couple affords both a home in Boston and a pied-à-terre on Central Park West. Though the latest media sensation in The Big Apple is the disappearance of money maven Hannah Starr three weeks past, Scarpetta's not on that - instead, she's on the case of a young jogger whose body was discovered in the Park. There's no reason to think there's any connection, but during Scarpetta's next appearance on CNN the host tries to get her to connect the dead woman to the missing one, going so far as to claim that both had been seen "getting into a yellow cab." Gee, I thought everybody in Manhattan rode in cabs all the time... Wes... errr, Benton has his own problems, involving an "inappropriate" Christmas card from a recently discharged patient at McLean. Something about this woman sets his teeth on edge - though it's difficult to figure out what could ruffle the preternaturally calm shrink and former FBI wunderkind. That's before the bomb shows up on their doorstep. All of which kicks Marino, Lucy, Lucy's squeeze Jaime Berger (ADA in charge of sex crimes [ain't that Linda Fairstien's job?]), and a host of cop-types into high gear. A missing BlackBerry and a deteriorating relationship between Lucy and Jaime add to the fun. But you ain't seen nothing yet - if you thought Benton's (did I get the name right) resurrection was something, The Scarpetta Factor is gonna set you on your ear. Somewhere about 1998, the Kay Scarpetta series went off the rails. Instead of being about a ferociously intelligent woman who uses her skills and intellect to solve crimes, the series morphed into something about relationships - almost always dysfunctional relationships. First there was Scarpetta's niece Lucy, the supercali-technologic-XP-all-precocious young lesbian: her coming out, her violence, her tendency to be completely uncontrollable and somewhat antisocial. Then there was the whole Wesley thing, with his "death" and reappearance. Then there was the Marino thing (a drunken attempt to "hook up" with Scarpetta. There were all the moves - Virginia to South Carolina to Florida to Bos/NYC - and Scarpetta's career changes. Oh, and the whole wolfman Chandonne thing, too... Recently, it looked as though author Patricia Cornwell had pulled the series out of its funk, especially in the most recent installment - simply named Scarpetta. In the seventeenth book of this venerable series, however, Cornwell backslides something fierce. Of the nearly 500 pages of The Scarpetta Factor (a hefty tome), much more than half is given over to the characters' analysis of their feelings, fears, hopes, desires, memories... There are soliloquies on what kind of tomato Scarpetta should slice up for a 3:00 AM salad to make herself feel better about the bomb squad's leaving fingerprints on her glass sculpture. There are extended - and I mean several pages - renderings of Lucy's barely-contained rage at what she considers a slight by an FBO air-traffic controller. There is page after page of Marino and Wesley in their ongoing pissing contest. It's rather boring, in fact. Yes, the pieces of a good mystery are all there: Marino has his cop moments; Scarpetta is a pathology goddess in scrubs and a hair net. Lucy has better computers (and more smarts) than NSA signals intelligence, and knows how to use them. But Lord! There is so much misdirection and so much sniveling going on in here that its removal would have cut the book in half and still left the plot intact. Last time out, I thought Scarpetta was back: it appears I was wrong. all content copyright © 2014 by scmrak
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