If you ever want a prime example of a book series that has taken a sharp nosedive in quality, this is the one. I was in a program called, Safe Quarters, being protected from my youngest sister and brother and I bought the audio version of Last Precinct.” I had a brand new car and I sat outside the facility in the heat of summer, runnng my car air conditioning, and read your box on my car radio. Guys, most homeless would come by the car to visit me, some getting in and listening for awhile, all wondering what I was doing in a place like that! In the four and one half months I was there I read six of your books on audio and spent a whole lot of money on gas! But I developed a love for you YOU and Kay! Elegant, trumpet-like lilies, she thought. But there was something off. Something not right. It was the colour. It was strange, sort of pale and flesh-coloured… Thomas Chandonne – Son of a powerful, rich family in Paris. He was found in a container at a port in Richmond. Heavily decomposed, his cause of death undetermined.

Comments : Needs some good solid characters, some new and comical ones then and there, just to bring down the very dark atmosphere ! When they return to Richmond, Virginia, Kay and Marino deal with the case of a woman brutalized and killed in a little shop and with attempts from a member of Dr. Scarpetta's team to sabotage her. Thanks to Marino, they learn that the new police chief, Diane Bray, is behind the sabotage because she wants to gain control of the investigation. Bray is also behind a drugs-smuggling operation, but she is killed with the same modus operandi as the young woman in the shop. It is clear that the killer is at large and trying to kill the people investigating the death of the man in the container. Postmortem, published in 1990, is, I think, also her most popular book as well. It is really the book that started a new trend with CSI-style novels – forensic anthropology mystery books involved in solving brutal murders, and serial killer cases, all that would take the fiction genre by storm. Lucy has turned gun happy & willing to kill every bad man she thinks she sees. Marino is balled up in knots in regards to Benton.

Kay Scarpetta has not handled Benton Wesley’s death well. She has worked herself into the ground. She has distanced herself from her friends and employees. She has even started smoking again. She is mired in guilt and regret over every unkind word she ever spoke to Benton. No, Kay Scarpetta is not handling her grief well at all. There is an international killer on the loose in Richmond and this killer is leaving behind some strange evidence. There are dirty cops in high places on the force. It's up to thorough Chief medical examiner Dr. Kay Scarpetta and her watchdog/best friend tough detective Captain Marino to get to the bottom of things. From Richmond to Florida to Paris..Local police, FBI, ATF, Interpol this is a crime mystery not to be missed. Thirdly, the four-months new Deputy Chief, Diane Bray, arrives on scene, oozing power, seduction and entitlement with every step, the epitome of sexual harassment and bullying in the workplace. Bray makes it clear to Kay that she is responsible for the new protocols at the crime scene and that she has deliberately reassigned Marino so as to break up the professional relationship between Marino and Kay. And Bray goads her about Benton’s death. Just like Dan Brown, she also had legal issues. The author of the Virginia Ghost Murders, Leslie Sachs, accused Patricia of plagiarism for her The Last Precinct novel, saying that the two books have too many similarities to be a mere coincidence. Virginia’s Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Kay Scarpetta is of Italian descent both from her father’s and mother’s sides. Over the years, aka over several books, she moved quite a lot to various cities. In the first few novels, she was working in Richmond as the Chief Medical Examiner for the Commonwealth of Virginia.

The funniest line of the book was when she shouts (again) that she just doesn't cry, what with crying all the time. As predicted, now that Cornwell "killed" off Benton, he's suddenly much more beloved and gets more space. Kay is exactly the same, but her frequent crying and "feeling depressed" is now attributed to his loss (I will never ever buy another so I skimmed wikipedia with one eye - I'll never get to see his resurrection and omg engagement). Lucy is exactly the same, ie. not really there except in illogical bits of annoying-her-aunt (her relationship with Marino would have been the only interesting one but, as usual, off-screen). After reading book one, Post mortem, starring Kay Scarpetta & Pete Marino I was absolutely hooked andHeroine - 2/5 : Kay Scarpetta. She thinks she can do anything and cryout. Just wanted to say that it does not work all the time. I remember in the middle of the series, I really felt for her. Now she has really turned into some stranger to me. She attended Davidson College where she earned her English degree in 1979. She got her first job the same year, working for the Charlotte Observer where she did various jobs, starting from listing TV programs to covering the police beat.

After leaving her job as a journalist behind, in 1985 she started working with the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner of Virginia, where she stayed for six years. This is the very place that her fictional character, dr. Kay Scarpetta, would work in as well.

A Note From the Publisher

There's this French serial killer on the loose and he runs off to Virginia. Interpol gets involved because Scarpetta involves them and she and Marino get to visit France. Scarpetta gets a new beau and the case solved. I didn't like the abrupt ending of this book, and I didn't buy Kay's feelings for Tally. Two business meetings, a one-night stand, and a lovers' spat, and suddenly she can't get him off her mind and is desperate to find him. Yet nothing ever comes of it. It was disappointing. Characters - 3/5 : No new one, just turning good to bad and bad to worse, and if that is called a twist, I do not accept. Plot - 1/2/5 : Good start, but disappointing finish. Kay and Marino come together to solve the mystry behind a unidentified body found in a container, which leads them to France to unreveal a horrible serial killer who calls himself Le Loug Garou - The Werewolf. Kay is again put down when she choses to flirt and Lucy irritates me that i feel I have reached my limit. And the way Marino is treated shows clearly that the series has started to sink. There's a killer on the loose that no one seems to understand his motives. He's vicious and very destructive to his victims body. He started his murders in Paris and has now transferred his evil doings into the United States, particularly the state of Virginia. However, there's something strange about this killer. He has a rare disease called hypertrichosis; his body being fully covered with hair. At each of the crime scenes this hair has been found on the victims. One victim was able to escape his torture but can't describe his features. The things that he does to his victims leaves them unidentifiable.