Book Review

By Derryll White

Cornwell, Patricia (2009).  The Scarpetta Factor.

I am reading this book out of the cycle in which the Scarpetta novels have been written, something I have tried not to do. I find I am missing a lot, not making connections with the characters Cornwell has developed so carefully throughout the sequence.

In fact I have to say this novel doesn’t work for me at all.  Cornwell spends so much time and energy trying to fill in the back story that there isn’t much left for plot and character development.  I know it would be more meaningful if I had read all the preceding Scarpetta volumes, but that just wasn’t possible for me.  I am sure a lot of readers just jump in, at any point in the series but that doesn’t appear to be an option for me.

By the mid-point I am convinced kay Scarpetta is having a mental breakdown.  Lucy, her niece, is this brooding figure who has lost a hundred million dollars or so, and everyone else is simply aiding and abetting them.  And I don’t think it bets much better at the end.

When I finish travelling I will go back and re-initiate the series with the novels I have to hand.  I know I will come back to liking Dr. Scarpetta as she is a landmark character, and Patricia Cornwell because she is an excellent writer. My caution to readers of the Scarpetta novels is that they are read best as a series, in sequence.

****

Excerpts from the novel:

THE CITY TODAY – If people thought they had privacy in their own homes or hotel rooms, think again.  Sexual predators, robbers, terrorists, the government – don’t let them see you.  Don’t let them hear you.  Make sure they aren’t watching.  Make sure they aren’t listening.  If they don’t see or hear you, they can’t get you.  Security cameras on every corner, vehicle tracking, spy cams, sound amplifiers, eavesdropping, observing strangers in their most vulnerable and humiliating moments.  All it takes is one piece of information in the wrong hands and your entire life can change.

THE MEASURE – Computers didn’t get drunk or forget, had no regrets, didn’t care.  They connected everything, created logical trees on the data wall.  Marino was afraid of his own data wall.  He was afraid it didn’t make sense, was afraid that almost every decision he’d ever made was a bad one with no rhyme or reason to it, no Master Plan.  He didn’t want to see how many offshoots went nowhere or were linked to Scarpetta.  In a way, she had become the icon in the center of his connections and disconnections.  In a way, she made the most sense and the least.

AGGRESSION – “You’re familiar with the borderline personality.  An individual who has breaks or splits in ego boundaries and, given enough stress, can act out aggressively, violently.  Aggression is about competing.  Competing for the male, for the female, competing for the person most fit for breeding.  Competing for resources, such as food and shelter.  Competing for power because without a hierarchy there can’t be social order.  In other words, aggression occurs when it’s profitable.”

U.S. ECONOMY – The worst panic he’d ever observed here wasn’t even 9/11.  It was the economy.  It was what he’d been seeing for months, the terrorism on Wall Street, the disastrous financial losses and a chronic fear that it was only going to get worse.  Not having two dimes to rub together was a lot more likely to do you in than some serial killers supposedly cruising around in a yellow cab.

– Derryll White once wrote books but now chooses to read and write about them.  When not reading he writes history for the web at www.basininstitute.org.

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