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.