09/26/2016
In bestseller Cornwell’s uneven 24th Kay Scarpetta novel (after 2015’s Depraved Heart), the forensic pathologist investigates the bizarre death of 23-year-old Brit Elisa Vandersteelis, who was riding her bicycle in a Cambridge, Mass., park when she suffered a fatal electrical burn that looks like a lightning strike but isn’t. Meanwhile, Scarpetta’s FBI agent husband, Benton Wesley, is called away on matters of national security, which turn out to involve the sudden death of Gen. John Briggs, a long-time friend of Scarpetta’s and one of the backers of her Cambridge Forensic Center. Electricity seemed to play a role in his death, too, making Scarpetta believe there’s a connection. Of course, whenever there’s a series of suspicious deaths, the specter of Carrie Grethen, Scarpetta’s nemesis, isn’t far from her thoughts. Coupled with threats she’s been receiving from the mysterious Tailend Charlie, these new deaths appear to fit Carrie’s MO. Lots of cutting-edge forensic detail and some revelatory character moments help compensate for a plot with only occasional flashes of narrative energy. Agent: Esther Newberg, ICM. (Nov.)
Chaos (Kay Scarpetta Series #24)
Narrated by Susan Ericksen
Patricia CornwellUnabridged — 13 hours, 2 minutes
Chaos (Kay Scarpetta Series #24)
Narrated by Susan Ericksen
Patricia CornwellUnabridged — 13 hours, 2 minutes
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Overview
#1 New York Times bestselling author Patricia Cornwell returns with the remarkable twenty-fourth thriller in her popular high-stakes series starring medical examiner Dr. Kay Scarpetta.
In the quiet of twilight, on an early autumn day, twenty-six-year-old Elisa Vandersteel is killed while riding her bicycle along the Charles River. It appears she was struck by lightning-except the weather is perfectly clear with not a cloud in sight. Dr. Kay Scarpetta, the Cambridge Forensic Center's director and chief, decides at the scene that this is no accidental Act of God.
Her investigation becomes complicated when she begins receiving a flurry of bizarre poems from an anonymous cyberbully who calls himself Tailend Charlie. Though subsequent lab results support Scarpetta's conclusions, the threatening messages don't stop. When the tenth poem arrives exactly twenty-four hours after Elisa's death, Scarpetta begins to suspect the harasser is involved, and sounds the alarm to her investigative partner Pete Marino and her husband, FBI analyst Benton Wesley.
She also enlists the help of her niece, Lucy. But to Scarpetta's surprise, tracking the slippery Tailend Charlie is nearly impossible, even for someone as brilliant as her niece. Also, Lucy can't explain how this anonymous nemesis could have access to private information. To make matters worse, a venomous media is whipping the public into a frenzy, questioning the seasoned forensics chief's judgment and "a quack cause of death on a par with spontaneous combustion."
Editorial Reviews
Praise for Chaos: “Thrilling…. Readers new to Cornwell will find themselves involved from the very first page, as will the veterans. Chaos is one book you should not miss.” — Bookreporter.com
“Lots of cutting-edge forensic detail and some revelatory character moments.” — Publishers Weekly on Chaos
“Patricia Cornwell has created characters with real emotions and life experiences, and she provides them with more than enough danger to make things interesting. Dr. Scarpetta has become a good friend.” — MysteryPlayground.net on Chaos
“[An] absorbing thriller.” — Blackfive.net on Chaos
“There is a quiet intensity to Ms. Cornwell’s writing that compels you to read, then the eeriness sets in. . . . With CHAOS, once again Patricia Cornwell mesmerizes with her astounding scientific knowledge, her keen ear for dialogue and the human psyche, all woven together flawlessly.” — FreshFiction.com on Chaos
“While Scarpetta’s character has flaws, she is still a powerful female protagonist and she offers the reader an amazing calculating approach to investigation. I am always amazed at the passion that she has for her position. . . . A fast engaging read.” — Dad of Divas Reviews on Chaos
There is a quiet intensity to Ms. Cornwell’s writing that compels you to read, then the eeriness sets in. . . . With CHAOS, once again Patricia Cornwell mesmerizes with her astounding scientific knowledge, her keen ear for dialogue and the human psyche, all woven together flawlessly.
[An] absorbing thriller.
Praise for Chaos: “Thrilling…. Readers new to Cornwell will find themselves involved from the very first page, as will the veterans. Chaos is one book you should not miss.
Patricia Cornwell has created characters with real emotions and life experiences, and she provides them with more than enough danger to make things interesting. Dr. Scarpetta has become a good friend.
While Scarpetta’s character has flaws, she is still a powerful female protagonist and she offers the reader an amazing calculating approach to investigation. I am always amazed at the passion that she has for her position. . . . A fast engaging read.
[An] absorbing thriller.
There is a quiet intensity to Ms. Cornwell’s writing that compels you to read, then the eeriness sets in. . . . With CHAOS, once again Patricia Cornwell mesmerizes with her astounding scientific knowledge, her keen ear for dialogue and the human psyche, all woven together flawlessly.
Patricia Cornwell has created characters with real emotions and life experiences, and she provides them with more than enough danger to make things interesting. Dr. Scarpetta has become a good friend.
While Scarpetta’s character has flaws, she is still a powerful female protagonist and she offers the reader an amazing calculating approach to investigation. I am always amazed at the passion that she has for her position. . . . A fast engaging read.
Thrilling…. Readers new to Cornwell will find themselves involved from the very first page, as will the veterans. CHAOS is one book you should not miss.
06/15/2016
Odd that 26-year-old Elisa Vandersteel seems to have been killed by lightening while riding her bike along the Charles River one starlit night. Soon thereafter, medical examiner Dr. Kay Scarpetta starts receiving creepy poems about the case from an anonymous cyberbully, and the media go berserk when lab results confirm Scarpetta's implausible lightning hypothesis. With a million-copy first printing.
Although this is not Cornwell’s best mystery, narrator Susan Ericksen works to bring Medical Examiner Kay Scarpetta to life. A young woman bicycling through a park near Harvard is killed in what appears to be a lightning electrocution only hours after casually meeting Kay. At almost the same time, several states away, Kay’s mentor is also attacked. Ericksen’s pace seems methodical and deliberate, perhaps matching the slower tempo of this latest entry in the Scarpetta series. Kay comes across as just plain tired and cranky, investigative partner Pete Marino is typically pushy, and FBI agent Benton displays his characteristic unflappability. Conversations between the three of them comprise most of this low-action whodunit. N.M.C. © AudioFile 2017, Portland, Maine
2016-10-05
Dr. Kay Scarpetta’s talk to the bigwigs at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government is delayed by murder, malicious online posts, anonymous messages, a visit from her sister, and a familiar malefactor from her past in this kitchen-sink 24th installment.Walking through Harvard Yard in the brutal September heat, Scarpetta muses that normal days for a forensic pathologist are shockingly abnormal for everyone else. As if to prove her point, she instantly gets word from her old frenemy Cambridge Police Investigator Pete Marino that a call to 911 complained that she’d just quarreled violently with Bryce Clark, her chief of staff. Scarpetta, already pondering a series of obscure but meticulously timed messages she’s had from someone calling himself Tailend Charlie, is in no mood for the impending visit from her disapproving younger sister, Dorothy, whose flight to Boston keeps getting delayed. So it’s a perfect time for Anya and Enya Rummage, a pair of dull-witted teenage twins, to report finding a body in John F. Kennedy Park. Arriving at the crime scene, Scarpetta realizes with a shock that she encountered Elisa Vandersteel in passing only a few hours before her death. Is her old nemesis, that monstrous psychopath Carrie Grethen, trying to get at her yet again (Depraved Heart, 2015, etc.) by killing a stranger who crossed her path? And just how was the Canadian-born Elisa, who’d been working as an au pair in tech CEO William Portison’s Mayfair home, killed? Even the twins noticed a burning smell coming from the body, but there’s no meteorological sign of the lightning strike that would seem to be the most obvious cause for her death. Fans, aware that this particular fatality is incidental to the larger saga of the heroine’s epic struggle with the forces of evil, will forgive the absence of a coherent mystery or characters worth caring about. The closest analogue to Cornwell’s wildly successful series, in fact, may be a superhero franchise.
Product Details
| BN ID: | 2940160648941 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | HarperCollins Publishers |
| Publication date: | 11/15/2016 |
| Series: | Kay Scarpetta Series |
| Edition description: | Unabridged |
| Sales rank: | 1,104,596 |
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