Flesh and Blood, Book 22

Patricia Cornwell

HarperCollins Publishers Australia, Oct 20, 2014 - Fiction - 388 pages

#1 New York Times bestselling author Patricia Cornwell delivers the next enthralling thriller in her high-stakes series starring Kay Scarpetta-a complex tale involving a serial sniper who strikes chillingly close to the forensic sleuth herself. It's a sunny morning in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and also Dr. Kay Scarpetta's birthday. She's about to head to Miami for a vacation with Benton Wesley, her FBI profiler husband, when she notices seven pennies on a wall behind their home. Is this a kids' game? And if so, why are all of the coins dated 1981 and so shiny they could be newly minted? Her cellphone rings, and Detective Pete Marino tells her there's been a homicide five minutes away. A high school music teacher has been shot with uncanny precision as he unloaded groceries from his car. Yet no one has heard or seen a thing. In this 22nd Scarpetta novel, the master forensic sleuth finds herself in the unsettling pursuit of a serial sniper who leaves no incriminating evidence except fragments of copper. The shots seem impossible to achieve, yet they are so perfect that they cause death in an instant.The victims appear to have had nothing in common, and there is no pattern to indicate where the killer will strike next. Until Scarpetta comes face to face with shocking evidence that implicates her techno genius niece, Lucy, her very own flesh and blood. With the bravura storytelling and state-of-the-art forensic details that are her hallmarks, Patricia Cornwell again raises the bar with this highly entertaining new tale, her most captivating Scarpetta novel yet.

About the author

Patricia Cornwell was born in Miami, Florida on June 9, 1956. When she was nine years old, her mother tried to give her and her two brothers to evangelist Billy Graham and his wife to care for. For a while the children lived with missionaries since their mother was unable to care for them. After graduating from Davidson College in 1979, she worked for The Charlotte Observer eventually covering the police beat and winning an investigative reporting award from the North Carolina Press Association for a series of articles on prostitution and crime in downtown Charlotte. Her award-winning biography of Ruth Bell Graham, the wife of Billy Graham, A Time for Remembering, was published in 1983. From 1984 to 1990, she worked as a technical writer and a computer analyst at the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner in Richmond, Virginia. While working for the medical examiner, she began to write novels. Although the award-winning novel Postmortem was initially rejected by seven different publishers, once it was published in 1990 it became the only novel ever to win the Edgar, Creasey, Anthony, and Macavity awards as well as the French Prix du Roman d'Adventure, in one year. She is the author of the Kay Scarpetta series, the Andy Brazil series, and the Winston Garano series. She has also written two cookbooks entitled Scarpetta's Winter Table and Food to Die For; a children's book entitled Life's Little Fable; and non-fiction works like Portrait of a Killer: Jack the Ripper - Case Closed.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Flesh and Blood, Book 22; Cornwell, Patricia Daniels.:Kay Scarpetta; Kay Scarpetta; Scarpetta series, Patricia Daniels Cornwell
• Author: Patricia Cornwell
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers Australia, 2014
• ISBN: 0732299144, 9780732299149
• Length: 388 pages
• Subjects: Fiction / Mystery & Detective / General; Fiction / Mystery & Detective / Women Sleuths; Fiction / Thrillers / Crime; Fiction / Thrillers / Suspense