Fascinating Crime Thrillers

It was on June 9, 1956, that Patricia Cornwell, who is the world’s top-selling crime novelist was born. She is known for her forensic pathologist character Dr. Kay Scarpetta.

The writer did not have a sunny childhood. After the death of her father when she was only 5 her mother took her and her two brothers to live in Montreat, North Carolina. Unfortunately, her mother had to be hospitalized for mental illness and she and her siblings spent time in the foster care system. Cornwell graduated from Davidson College, married her college professor and became a reporter for the Charlotte Observer. In Richmond, Virginia she worked as a technical writer and computer analyst for the chief medical examiner’s office.

She received many rejections from publishers at first but finally was able to release her first novel “Postmortem” in 1990. This was an introduction to Dr. Kay Scarpetta and she became a favored character and the novel was a success. This novel received the Edgar Award for Best First Novel in 1991.

In the novel, we are introduced to Dr. Kay Scarpetta, the chief examiner of the Commonwealth of Virginia. She attends the scene of a gruesome strangling which is part of a string of unsolved murders in Richmond, Virginia. Scarpetta works with Pete Marino, a detective with the Richmond police and FBI profiler Benton Wesley to try to piece together the pathology of the killer. Scarpetta must also deal with her precocious ten-year-old niece Lucy in her personal life and has an unpredictable romantic relationship with the local Commonwealth attorney.

Scarpetta, Wesley, and local investigative reporter Abby Turnbull conspire to put out a news story suggesting the killer has a mental disorder and a distinct body order due to a rare metabolic disease. Then Scarpetta finds out that all of the five victims have called 911 and thinks that the killer might be a 911 operator choosing his victims by their voices. Soon Scarpetta is in danger when the killer breaks into her home. The novel ends with a dramatic conclusion.

Cornwell went on to write 18 more best-sellers with Scarpetta. To be able to write precisely Cornwell attended autopsies and had interviews with forensic scientists and law enforcement professionals. She is an incredible woman who learned to fly helicopters, shoot guns, and scuba dive just like her characters did in her books. Her novels have been credited with helping to inspire such TV shows as “CSI Crime Scene Investigation” and “Cold Case”.

Besides her novels featuring Scarpetta, she has written novels where the main characters are Andy Brazil, a journalist who became a cop, and state police investigator Win Garano. Her talent does not stop there and she’s also written several cookbooks and a children’s book.

She published an interesting book titled “Portrait of a Killer: Jack the Ripper – Case Closed” in 2002. This book was based on her own intensive investigation into the world of the notorious, yet unknown 19th-century London serial killer, whom she believes was the British artist Walter Sickert.

Cromwell’s personal life meantime has turned into a crime thriller on its own. When in 1992 she had a brief affair with a married FBI agent, four years later her estranged husband, an ex-FBI agent who thought the affair was the reason for the break-up of their marriage tried to unsuccessfully murder his wife. Her crime fiction novels have earned her $100 million dollars and she travels about with bodyguards. Cromwell is known for philanthropy, donating millions to forensic research and animal rescue among other causes.

In 1999 there was the TV drama/thriller “A.T.F.” an embattled bureau chief is held accountable for a national fiasco. In 2010 there was “The Front” where a detective uncovered a sinister conspiracy while getting ready to research a disintegrating neighborhood. That same year was a drama/mystery “At Risk” about the reopening of a 20-year-old murder case. In 2012 the TV movie “Hornet’s Nest” came out about a police chief, her top deputy, and a reporter investigating a serial killer.

Dr. Kay Scarpetta returns in the 2021 novel “Autopsy” where she finds herself hunting an ingenious killer. Scarpetta has been away for years and has inherited an overbearing secretary along with a legacy of neglect and possible corruption. This time she has help from her husband Benton Wesley who has become a forensic psychologist with the US Secret Service. Scarpetta and her husband have relocated to Old Town Alexandria, where she works just five miles from the Pentagon. She is consulted on the death of a woman found by railroad tracks and the chase for the killer begins. Another catastrophe emerges when in a top-secret private laboratory in outer space, two scientists aboard are discovered dead. Scarpetta is appointed to the highly classified Doomsday Mission, specializing in sensitive national security cases and she is summoned to the White House Situation Room. Thus readers are pulled into all the intrigue and the novel just leads them on.

Once again Patricia Cromwell attracts the attention of her readers providing shocking twists, nerve-tingling tension, and fascinating forensic detail.

Sit back, read, and get involved in her novels and find out why Cromwell is the world's number one bestselling crime writer.