Book Reviews and Thoughts :: The world of Books and Literature

Mystery never gets better than this!

Postmortem is Patricia Cornwell’s debut novel and a brilliant one at that. Cornwell stuns the reader by her eloquent and visual descriptions on the scenery and moments. She makes you doubt the genre of the novel by in-depth description of emotions and then she slowly dissolves all of these into the background - a wonderful background of a gripping and thrilling mystery. Crime fiction was never so facile.

Postmortem is the first book in the series of Dr. Kay Scarpetta mysteries. Dr. Scarpetta is the chief medical examiner for the commonwealth of Virginia and investigates crimes with help of her medical expertise.

Cornwell’s flawless subject knowledge had me impressed. Not only is she fully informed about the medical nitty-gritty but also about any other thing she cares to use in her story, a good example in Postmortem is her knowledge of SQL database. What makes Postmortem different for other crime fiction is the effective use of a background story that has nothing to do with the mystery but is so well knit that it doesn’t distract.

A woman gets murdered every Friday. There is a pattern. The sadistic pleasure is apparent from medical reports. But there is nothing common between these women. How does the killer pick them? The city cannot sleep on Fridays until this unidentifiable murderer is unveiled. No, the plot is not clichéd even if the above lines make you think so, mainly because the mystery is presented from the point of view of the medical examiner who studies the victims. Pick this up and you will be tempted to follow the entire series.