Non-traditional Detective: Blow Fly by Patricia Cornwell

Summary

Kay Scarpetta is a former Virginia Chief Medical Examiner now living in Florida and still mourning the death of her lover, Benton.  Benton is hiding out as Tom but very much alive. Lucy, Kay's niece, runs The Last Precinct, a private, international investigation company.  Marino, a retired cop, works for Lucy and is secretly in love with Scarpetta. Both know that Benton is alive--they helped fake his death. Jean-Baptiste Chandonne, the Wolfman, who suffers from hypertrichosis, is a serial killer on death row obsessed with Scarpetta.  Jay Talley, or Jean-Paul Chandonne, is the strikingly handsome twin brother of Jean-Baptiste, also a serial killer, hiding for the FBI in Baton Rogue and preying on women with the help of his companion Bev. The two men are the twins sons of the head of the dangerous Chandonne crime family.  Rocco Caggiano is Jean-Baptiste's lawyer, an employee of the Chandonne family, and Marino's estranged son.  Nic is a student of Scarpetta's and a detective in Louisiana investigating the disappearances of women around Baton Rogue.  These characters form the cast of Patricia Cornwell's Blow Fly.  Jean-Baptiste faces impending execution still obsessed with Scarpetta having missed his chance to murder her in the past.  In an effort to see her again, he writes her a letter offering to give up his family if she will interview him and person and be the doctor who gives him his lethal injection. Kay is also contacted by Louisiana coroner Dr. Lanier after he, too, receives a letter from Jean-Baptiste about a cold case, the death of a woman from an apparent drug overdose.  So how do all of these puzzles pieces fit together? Will Scarpetta and her friends be able to bring down the Chandonne family?  Will Jean-Baptiste fulfill his dream of killing Scarpetta?  Will they catch Jay and Bev before more women are murdered?  And Will Scarpetta find out that Benton is alive and that her closest friends kept it a secret from her?  Find out in Blow Fly, Patricia Cornwell's follow up to The Last Precinct.  

Review

I chose Blow Fly  because it was on the class bibliography for amateur detectives and my mother-in-law had a copy.  I hadn't read any previous Scarpetta novels and the only Cornwell book I had read was her non-fiction Portrait of a Killer: Jack the Ripper--Case Closed, which was interesting, though I didn't like her writing style.  Having now read one of her fiction novels, I still don't like her writing style.  As you can see from my summary, this novel is full of characters and storylines.  While all are connected, in my opinion, it is really too much for one novel. The constant change of focus from character to character and storyline to storyline is not only hard to follow but is distracting and, I would say, annoying.  I'm sure that had I read the past Scarpetta novels leading up to this one I would have more interest in the characters because I would know more about their back story; however, Cornwell offers enough explanation for new readers to follow the storyline.  Surprisingly, Scarpetta isn't a main player for much of the novel, which might be an issue for dedicated readers, although many might enjoy seeing the other players take a larger role. The pace of the novel certainly picks up toward the end when Scarpetta becomes more involved in the storyline, indicating to me that perhaps Cornwell is more comfortable with her main character and that branching off to cover the other characters was a challenging experiment. I also felt that, at times, Cornwell overdid it with the description. I found myself skimming passages that offered more detail than I needed.  Some of the description, especially relating to the two serial killers, is quite graphic, which some readers, like myself, might find a bit hard to stomach.  Overall, I didn't love the novel.  However, due to the popularity of the Scarpetta novels, I wonder if I might enjoy the series if I read it from the start or if Cornwell just really isn't my speed.  Who knows?  Maybe at some point I'll give her another try. 

References

Cornwell, P. (2003). Blow fly. New York: J. P. Putnam's Sons.

[Image of Blow Fly cover]. (2011). Retrieved on September 22, from: 

     http://www.fictiondb.com/author/patricia-cornwell~blow-

     fly~121543~b.htm