Postmortem - Patricia Cornwell

    1990; 342 pages.  New Author? : No, but it’s been a while.  Book #1 (out of 24, soon to be 25) in the Kay Scarpetta series.  Genres : Serial Killer Thriller; Medical Thriller; Crime Fiction.  Laurels: Edgar Award (1991) – Best First Novel (winner).   Overall Rating: 9*/10.

 

    The city of Richmond, Virginia is in panic mode.  A serial rapist/killer is on the loose, the kind who likes to break into women’s bedrooms, tie them up, assault them, and then strangle them to death.

 

    Victim Number Four has just been found, and it is particularly embarrassing for the city police department.  It appears she heard the intruder and called 9-1-1 just before he broke into her house.  But the call was deemed a low-emergency, assigned a “priority four”, and it was a couple hours before a patrol car passed by her house.  By then the crime was committed, the house was dark, and the officer reported that everything seemed normal.

 

    The blowback on this goof-up by the police could be monumental.  There’s only one thing to do: find a scapegoat, someone unpopular within the department, and shift the blame and the focus there.  But who to pick?

 

    How ‘bout that mouthy new Chief Medical Examiner, Kay Scarpetta?

 

What’s To Like...

    Postmortem is the first book in Patricia Cornwell’s long-running “Kay Scarpetta” series, wherein we follow the examinations and investigations of a 40-year-old medical examiner in Richmond.  Kay is an “anti-hero hero”, which is my favorite kind of protagonist.  She smokes, is divorced, has family issues, and drinks, the latter including a glass of scotch almost every night when she gets home from work.  Amazingly, she’s not burnt out, but hey, she’s still new at her job.

 

    There’s a bunch of plot threads to follow, including (and without spoilers):

a.) Who’s killing these women in Richmond?

b.) Who’s leaking Medical Examiner information to the press?

c.) What’s with the glitter and the odor?

d.) How does the killer know when there are unlocked windows at the victims’ houses?

e.) Is there some hidden link between the victims, or are the killings random?

f.) Who’s been hacking into Kay’s computer and planting phony samples in the fridge?

g.) Who was the intended target in the Victim #5 case?

    All these threads were surprisingly easy to follow and keep straight.  Patricia Cornwell’s storytelling is Just. That. Good.

 

    Being an analytical chemist, I found the forensic chemistry details fascinating.  I also enjoyed stepping back in time to the 1990s, particularly the “ancient technology” in use back then.  Data storage is done via floppy disks, and company intranets were just getting started.  Gas stations still offer “full service”, and typewriters are as common as word processors when it came to writing up reports.  When you turned your computer on, the opening screen shows a “C prompt” because MS-DOS is the main operating system, and your reports are printed out on that ghastly green-and-white striped paper.  The police use tape recorders, not cell phones, to record conversations, and then transfer anything valuable to reel-to-reel.  My, how things have changed.

 

    I liked the character development.  The pesky newspaper reporter is not pure evil, the autopsy technician has to cope with being gay back when “coming out” involved considerable risk, and Kay's boyfriend is an attorney for state of Virginia, which makes them both vulnerable for conflict-of-interest issues.  The most interesting character of all was the cop, Sgt. Pete Marino, who is forced into having Kay as his de facto partner, a role neither one is crazy about.  Last but not least, for those of you who are Hallmark Christmas movie junkies, there’s a precocious ten-year-old girl, Kay’s niece Lucy.  Every Hallmark Christmas movie has a precocious little girl in it.

 

    Things build to an exciting ending, which includes a couple of neat twists.  The story is more of a police procedural than a whodunit.  The last 14 pages serve as an epilogue, neatly tying up some plotline loose ends.  Postmortem is told in the first-person POV (Kay’s), and is a standalone story in addition to being the start of a series that is still going strong after 31 years.

 

Ratings…
    Amazon: 4.6*/5, based on 2,268 ratings.

    Goodreads: 4.01*/5, based on 221,386 ratings and 3,068 reviews

 

Things That Sound Dirty But Aren’t…

    “She’s slow to warm up this morning. … So am I, for that matter.”

 

Excerpts...

    “If it’s a serial killer, Dr. Scarpetta, doesn’t that indicate it’s quite likely to happen again?”

    As if they wanted it to happen again.

    “Is it true you found bite marks on the last victim, Doc?”

    It wasn’t true, but no matter how I answered such a question I couldn’t win.  “No comment,” and they assume it’s true.  “No,” and the next edition reads “Dr. Kay Scarpetta denies that bite marks have been found on the victims’ bodies…”  The killer, who’s reading the papers like everybody else, gets a new idea.  (pg. 4)

 

    “This is Dr. Scarpetta, chief medical examiner in Virginia.”

    “Oh.  You grant licenses to physicians, then─̶”

    “No.  We investigate deaths.”

    A pause.  “You mean a coroner?”

    There was no point in explaining that, no, I was not a coroner.  Coroners are elected officials.  They usually aren’t forensic pathologists.  You can be a gas station attendant and get elected coroner in some states.  (pg. 207)

 

I examined his wife.  I literally held her heart in my hands.  (pg. 140 )

    There are some quibbles, but nothing serious.  First of all, keep in mind the being a medical examiner is not a job for the squeamish, and neither is reading a book about one.  Corpses get cut open and examined, inside and out, and odors from doing this are the norm in the workplace.

 

    None of the murders take place on-screen, but it is the duty of the state medical examiner to get to the crime scene as quickly as possible to make firsthand observations, and the reader gets to accompany as she does that.

 

    The break in the case – the recovery of a piece of clothing – seemed a tad bit too convenient, ditto for the fact that the perp has a rare medical condition.  But maybe those are the types of lucky breaks that lead to the catching the baddy in real life.  For instance, if you go to Wikipedia, and read about the (real) “BTK killer”, who only got caught because he didn’t realize that even when you erase a floppy disk, the original data is actually still there.

 

    Finally, if you’re a serial killer trying to avoid arrest, DO NOT attempt to make the main person pursuing you your next victim!  Not in real life; not in a book!  Even though it makes for an exciting ending.

 

    9 Stars.  Don’t let my quibbles deter you from picking up Postmortem.  I found it to be a spine-tingling thriller, with a wonderful set of characters, and I got a great “feel” for the life of a medical examiner.  I’ve only read one other book from this series, Black Notice (Book 10), and that was back in 2015 (the review is here), but I now have a couple more of the books on my Kindle, and I’m looking forward to getting better acquainted with the series.