Unnatural Exposure - Patricia Cornwell

   1997; 367 pages.  New Author? : No.  Book #8 (out of 28) in the Kay Scarpetta series.  Genres : Serial Killer Thriller; Medical Thriller; Crime Fiction.  Overall Rating: 6*/10.

 

    It began as just a routine cadaver dismemberment case, a body unearthed at the local landfill.

 

    Well, okay, that wouldn’t seem very routine to you or me, but for Kay Scarpetta, the Chief Medical Examiner of Richmond, Virginia, it’s not her first mutilated corpse.

 

    Preliminary lab results offer only scant information.  The victim is female, and was old and emaciated.  A check of missing persons files doesn’t yield any likely matches.

 

    To make matters worse, Kay’s come down with some flu-like symptoms.  Probably picked it up while examining that corpse.  Oh well, she’ll take things easy the next couple days.  What’s the worst it can be?

 

    You’d be surprised, Kay.  Very, very surprised.

 

What’s To Like...

    Unnatural Exposure is my third read from Patricia Cornwell’s “Kay Scarpetta” medical thriller series.  Determining who the dismembered body belonged to is an important part of the storyline, but, as the book’s title indicates, this is more about a possible outbreak of a plague-like virus.  Is it deadly?  Where did it come from?  Do we take two aspirin and sweat it out, or are we all going to die?

 

    Being a chemist, I was fascinated by the lab scenes.  Yes, the analytical chemistry is medical in nature, but it was fun to watch Kay deduce things via laboratory procedures.  Being a medical examiner, Kay also has some knowledgeable and enlightening viewpoints about the details of Elvis’s death.

 

    The book was published in 1997 and it was fun to “relive” that era.  AOL is where you go to send an email.  One of the morgues is hoping to get an intranet computer system installed.  Cell phones are still in their infancy, so most people carry pagers.  A portable color scanner will cost you $500.  Zoom meetings don’t exist, but AOL chatrooms are a nice substitute.  And Kay’s first Virtual Reality experience was mindblowing.

 

     I enjoyed watching the bureaucratic (FBI, CDC, etc.) response to the *possibility* of a plague arising out of all this.  When you have only preliminary medical results, how do you balance prudent precautions with hysteria-inducing drastic measures?  Food for thought since the Covid virus still runs rampant in today’s world.

 

    The ending does tie up both the criminal plot thread (who put the corpse in the landfill) and the pathological one (where and why did the virus come from?).  It’s not particularly exciting, which is a plus for a medical thriller and a minus for a mystery tale.

 

Ratings…
    Amazon: 4.5*/5, based on 6,235 ratings and 461 reviews.

    Goodreads: 4.07*/5, based on 61,231 ratings and 970 reviews.

 

Kewlest New Word ...

Hinky (adj.) : nervous; jittery.

Others: Kerf (n.).

 

Excerpts...

    “I can’t believe this.”  I was only getting angrier.  “I have to release information to correct misinformation.  I can’t be put in this position, Marino.”

    “Don’t worry, I’m going to take care of this and a whole lot more,” he promised.  “I don’t guess you know.”

    “Know what?”

    “Rumor has it that Ring’s been seeing Patty Denver.”

    “I thought she was married,” I said as I envisioned her from a few moments earlier.

    “She is,” he said.  (pg. 68)

 

    “Ma’am, this flight is overbooked.  We simply don’t have room.”

    “Here,” I said, showing her the paperwork.

    Her eyes scanned the red-bordered Declaration For Dangerous Goods, and froze halfway down a column where it was typed that I was transporting “Infectious substances affecting humans.”  She glanced nervously around the kitchen and moved me closer to the rest rooms.

    “Regulations require that only a trained person can handle dangerous goods like these,” I reasonably explained.  “So it has to stay with me.”

    “What is it?” she whispered, her eyes round.

    “Autopsy specimens.”  (pg. 247)

 

“I think the public has a right to know if there’s a psycho in their midst.”  (pg. 97)

    There’s a moderate amount of profanity in Unnatural Exposure; I noted 14 instances in the first 10% of the book.  They are all of the “milder” variety, but a couple of f-bombs show up later, as well as a roll-in-the-hay.  I only noticed one typo: PH/pH, but this will only bother you if you’re a scientist.

 

    The text contains lots of references to past books and cases in this series.  Indeed, the tale starts with Kay in Dublin, Ireland, but it has absolutely nothing to do with the rest of the story.  To be fair though, this would not be bothersome if one is reading these books in chronological order.

 

    The book spends way too much time concentrating of Kay self-examining her life choices and having sharp words with anybody else foolish enough to render an opinion or offer advice to her on that.

 

    And as mentioned above, the ending is anticlimactic.  The key break in the landfill cadaver mystery felt arbitrary, and the whole rationale for the infectious assault seemed hard to believe.  For maximum enjoyment, it's probably best to ignore the crime-solving aspect, and just focus on the plague-stopping aspect.

 

    So read the books in this series in order, don’t try to solve the crime before Kay does, and for pete’s sake don’t try to tell Kay how to live her personal life.  The result will be an pleasant read and you’ll end up saying, “Well, at least it wasn’t Covid!”

 

    6 Stars.  One last thing.  Kay makes a business trip to Memphis, and checks in at the Peabody Hotel.  I’ve stayed there.  The book’s assertion that ducks are privileged guests there is completely accurate.  They even stage a daily “duck parade” there, during the noon hour IIRC.  If you’re ever in Memphis, be sure to check this out.