At the same time there is a modern weapon threat that is realistic enough to scare the pants off of me. That the victim was employed by the CIA and allegedly having an extramarital affair with Flagler only complicates matters, which are steeped in personal and professional quagmire.

The Judge's sister is found dead and Scarpetta and Marino have to fight the other forces to gain control of the investigations as a forensic pathologist and her fiercely protective sidekick Marino, a former homicide detective turned forensic operations specialist. Although I enjoy finding out about Kay and her family, this book, of 350 pages takes place over 2 days.There's clunkiness here and there where everything is spelled out in dialogue instead of conveying some in narrative or where readers are inside Scarpetta's head too much, but that's minor. Kay Scarpetta is a character who surpasses every other fictional medical examiner, in my humble opinion.

Instead, in the epilogue a text is sent informing that two of those abusers will be transitioned into different professional jobs so they won’t interact with her (supposedly). Her interests span outside the literary: Patricia co-founded of the Conservation Scientist Chair at the Harvard University Art Museums. I do like Cornwell’s Scarpetta series but admit to losing interest a little when there was so much focus on Scarpetta’s niece Lucy.Cornwell does a masterful job in this piece to resurrect some of her past greatness in the Scarpetta series.

With strong themes building throughout the short chapters, the reader feels propelled towards a climactic ending that has all the ingredients for a stellar novel. And she was the central character in If It Bleeds, a novella in the 2020 collection of the same name. She and investigator Pete Marino are soon notified that presiding judge (and Scarpetta’s friend/former roommate) Annie Chilton’s sister has been found dead at the family’s home. Cornwell, a former reporter who has worked in a medical examiner's office, sets her first mystery in Richmond, Va. At that time, I was more than willing to let Kate and her family of supporting characters ride off into the sunset because the books had gotten very formula-matic and repetitive.With protestors both inside and outside the courtroom and the potential for riots in the street, Scarpetta is understandably relieved to step down following examination.

It took me a while to get back in the swing of the series and I don’t think my enjoyment was spoilt in anyway from reading it as a standalone novel. After a "One week Later" chapter heading (thank goodness we did not have to endure 1733 additional pages detailing the week's passage based on the 10 pages on average each previous hour was allotted) we are given a summary of how the bad guy was formed from a horrible childhood.

Certainly Cornwell seems to forget about it in her eagerness to linger over the diabolical, state-of-the-art murder weapon by which the judge’s sister met her doom and to evoke the endless infighting among Scarpetta, her nemesis, Virginia health commissioner Dr. Kay Scarpetta (after 2013’s Dust) pits the chief medical examiner against a threat uncomfortably close to home.