Largely a disappointment. This author has lost her edge and this book is an example of why. This was at best a short story with a bunch of filler tossed in. When you read a book because you know it will put you to sleep and you need something to do that, you know there is a problem.

This book is horribly written. The plot is convoluted, there are no sympathetic characters, and the pacing is off. The story doesn't actually start until about page 300. It is also written in the first person present tense, which makes Kay Scarpetta sound like a crazy person. Most of her thought process is written as a stream of consciousness, which is not what I'm looking for in a mystery/police procedural. I don't know if Cornwell was trying to write in the style of Virginia Woolf, but it doesn't work here.

Oh, so disappointing! I am a fan of Patricia Cornwell and look forward to her new books...... I couldn't even continue reading this one -- about 1/2 through I just started skimming in case anything of importance happened so I would know for the next (hopefully much better) book. It didn't flow, didn't compel me to keep reading, lots of minute details that didn't add anything to the storyline, and I felt like Scarpetta herself wasn't true to her character in many cases. Will try the next one and hope it doesn't disappoint.

I found this novel lacking in most ways. It took about 400 pages for anything of interest to happen. The characters don't trust each other, and don't provide any reason for trust. Cornwell creates a world I just would not want to get anywhere near, and I don't intend to get anywhere near any of her other books either.

Ugh. This series was so good in the beginning but somewhere along the way, things have become depressing and confusing. I literally had trouble understanding the point of this book until the very end. I'm tired of how everybody is angry, sad, has secrets, etc etc. Nothing good ever happens to counter balance the negative and I'm left feeling tired and depressed after slogging through them...

Synopsis from product description: In this fast-paced story, a treacherous path from Scarpetta's past merges with the high- tech highway she now finds herself on. We travel back to the beginning of her professional career, when she accepted a scholarship from the Air Force to pay off her medical school debt. Now, more than twenty years and many career successes later, her secret military ties have drawn her to Dover Air Force Base, where she has been immersed in a training fellowship.

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I really hoped that Cornwell had heeded her readers' advice and gone back to the "old" Scarpetta, but she didn't. Instead, we have a paranoid, egotistical shell. First Kay thinks everyone is out to get her, then she thinks that she's to blame for every action that someone else in her life has taken. Please. The only glimpse we have of the Kay of old is at the end, but unfortunately, that was too late for this book. I'm also not enthralled with the latest books that rely heavily on technology. This may be interesting to some, but to me, it's overdone and replaces most of the interesting human reaction that Kay had with her work and colleagues/family. I won't go into the different tangents this book gets into, but I do wish that Cornwell didn't make things so convoluted and that she had a better editor. It annoys me so much when she goes into a one page description of something only to reiterate part of it a few pages later. The one positive aspect of this latest work is that Cornwell returned to using the first person. If she could continue to do that and bring back some of the warmth of the characters (and Kay's cooking) I might be willing to read her next book.

I have always loved Patricia Cornwell, and Port Mortuary definitely didn't disappoint. It was fact-paced, and (as usual), I had a hard time putting it down.

Bene, questo mi è piaciuto, finalmente un "cattivo" nuovo e personaggi ben delineati, così come la trama, cosa che non accadeva da tempo.