It's New Year's Eve, the final night of Virginia's bloodiest year since the Civil War, and another poor soul has turned up dead. Ted Eddings, a scuba diver and investigative reporter who was a favorite at the Medical Examiner's Office, is found thirty feet below the Elizabeth River's icy surface. Kay Scarpetta, Chief Medical Examiner for the state of Virginia, can't help but wonder why she received a phone call from someone reporting the death before the police were notified. Was Eddings probing the frigid depths of the Inactive Ship Yard for a story or simply diving for sunken trinkets? With the advent of a second murder - this one hitting even closer to home - the case envelops Scarpetta, her niece Lucy, and Police Captain Pete Marino in a world where both cutting-edge technology and old-fashioned detective work are critical offensive weapons. Together, they follow the trail of violence to its forbidding and unexpected source.
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Creators
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Awards
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Release date
May 15, 2007 -
Formats
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OverDrive Listen audiobook
- File size: 231338 KB
- Duration: 08:01:57
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Languages
- English
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Reviews
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An investigative reporter is found dead in an inactive Navy shipyard. While doing the post mortem, Virginia Medical Examiner Kay Scarpetta detects the unmistakable odor of bitter almonds arising from the body cavity. Death by cyanide is not usually an accident, and this one proves no exception. As Kay, niece Lucy, and pal Marino get tangled in the investigation, more murders occur. Meanwhile, Kay and her erstwhile lover re-kindle an old flame, and a terrorist cult and their messianic leader are introduced. C. J. Critt's reading is appealing, despite predictable scenarios and a credibility-stretching conclusion. Cornwell and Scarpetta are usually a great team, but this time the shaky plot doesn't measure up, leaving Critt a handful of interesting characters, but little else to work with. S.J.H. (c) AudioFile 2004, Portland, Maine -
C.J. Critt is masterful with this eerie Kay Scarpetta mystery. This plot illuminates, more than many novels in this series, the dangers faced by Scarpetta and her staff. Coldly and disquietingly, the medical examiner is isolated physically, while diving thirty feet deep in the Elizabeth River to view a cadaver, and mentally, when faced with reawakened memories of past love. Critt, as usual, delineates Kay Scarpetta; it would be hard to imagine anyone else in her place. The plot involves a military conspiracy and ends at a nuclear power plant. The whole book is a cliff-hanger, and the listener will only draw breath at the end. B.H.B. (c) AudioFile 2004, Portland, Maine
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