Body of Evidence

Patricia Cornwell’s Body of Evidence begins with a couple of letters Beryl Madison is writing to ‘M’ from Key West and mentions a couple of familiar bars. I love Key West and this reminds I need to return to Key West. It is March, a time I was considering for the trip. However, Beryl is there hiding and isn’t happy she has to return to Richmond. Beryl is an author and it is this very book she is writing that is about to cause the deaths of many people.

Beryl’s brutal murder back in her Richmond home the night she returns from Key West has baffled our heroine, ME Kay Scarpetto. ‘Why did she let him in?’ is her constant refrain. Why indeed would anyone invite her own killer in? Kay will come to understand that mistake. Beryl is an author who writes under pseudonyms and has reconnected Kay to an old flame, Mark, who is a lawyer somehow connected to Beryl and her legal troubles or is he. But who is Mark we wonder. Then without warning we have another author murdered, Beryl’s mentor Cary Harper. Authors are dying savagely; it is getting critical.

Next we get two suicides. Four deaths, two vicious and two suicides. All of these deaths happen for a book that might not exist. I’m also I’m wondering how Kay always ends up on the short list for assaults and possible murder. She’s just an ME. The killer is crafty, the story is hair-raising, and Cornwell isn’t having a sophomore jinx.