FRIDAY READS: Depraved Heart by Patricia Cornwell (READING UPDATE)

Let's pray this year's Scarpetta novel makes a lot more structural sense than last year's...

According to Amazon:

Dr. Kay Scarpetta is working a suspicious death scene in Cambridge, Massachusetts when an emergency alert sounds on her phone. A video link lands in her text messages and seems to be from her computer genius niece Lucy. But how can it be? It’s clearly a surveillance film of Lucy taken almost twenty years ago.

As Scarpetta watches she begins to learn frightening secrets about her niece, whom she has loved and raised like a daughter. That film clip and then others sent soon after raise dangerous legal implications that increasingly isolate Scarpetta and leave her confused, worried, and not knowing where to turn. She doesn’t know whom she can tell—not her FBI husband Benton Wesley or her investigative partner Pete Marino. Not even Lucy.

In this new novel, Cornwell launches these unforgettable characters on an intensely psychological odyssey that includes the mysterious death of a Hollywood mogul’s daughter, aircraft wreckage on the bottom of the sea in the Bermuda Triangle, a grisly gift left in the back of a crime scene truck, and videos from the past that threaten to destroy Scarpetta’s entire world and everyone she loves. The diabolical presence behind what unfolds seems obvious—but strangely, not to the FBI. Certainly that’s the message they send when they raid Lucy’s estate and begin building a case that could send her to prison for the rest of her life.

In the latest novel in her bestselling series featuring chief medical examiner Dr. Kay Scarpetta, Cornwell will captivate readers with the shocking twists, high-wire tension, and cutting-edge forensic detail that she is famous for, proving yet again why she’s the world’s #1 bestselling crime writer.

~Backup~  But is it really necessary?

Tonight I'm going in on Patricia Cornwell's latest Scarpetta release, Depraved Heart.  I'm praying on everything it's better than last year's Flesh and Blood.  I won't even plot my expectations in this post.  At the end of the day, I love Kay Scarpetta.  I just don't have any reservations for taking digs at Cornwell's story should it fall short.  So it's time to light the candles, turn on the heater, and slip under the covers for another crime-riddled adventure.  That hopefully makes some damn sense!  No seriously, last year's Flesh and Blood was so bad I DNF'ed it and skipped to the last pages.

So stay tuned for the results...

IN OTHER NEWS.  If Cornwell's latest fails, I have this interesting book to fall back on.  For some reason I went to two different stores in search of Tess Gerritsen's latest, Playing with Fire.  It was my intent to have it handy as a weekend reading back up to Cornwell.  However, I just couldn't find it.  Not even Barnes and Nobles had the book out!  Regardless, I finally got the balls to take on William C. Dietz's urban fantasy novel, Deadeye.

HAPPY READING, EVERYONE!

{Saturday - 10/31 Reading Update - 10:39pm}

Depraved Heart has been in my lap all morning.  I woke at about 8am and didn't get out of bed (officially) until 1pm.  I'm 262 pages in and I have to say I'm really, really enjoying it.  It has absolutely zero motion.  No motion or traction at all.  Characters sit around from scene to scene deducting, contemplating, and rehashing a collection of concerns and story matter.  Zero moment.  Yet!  I absolutely am hooked as to what's going on, and where the story will go.  I may be bias because I genuinely like Scarpetta's first person POV, as well as the other characters.  So I don't feel too slighted by the lack of movement in the story.  It's like sitting down with old friends and....  I'll leave that for later.  No, really.  I'm actually enjoying the book.  Besides, the weather–which is wet and chilly–helps the experience.  I'm hoping to have the book complete tomorrow.  Much, much better than last year's disaster, Flesh and Blood.  While Depraved Heart reads like a stalled jalopy, it's a lot more reader-friendly and comprehensible than the spaghetti-splaying Flesh and Blood.