Bingo: Border. Story deals with the borders between good and evil, life and death, rage and reason.
Patricia Cornwell’s Postmortem is the first in her Kay Scarpetta series. Scarpetta is chief medical examiner and she is plunged into a case where four women have been assaulted and strangled. The book is a standard procedural about a serial killer with relatively poor characterization. Scarpetta is not a compelling protagonist; she is somewhat stiff and colorless. Her colleagues in law enforcement are typical types—sexist gruff police officer, computer whiz, geeky morgue assistant. There’s also a feisty reporter and Scarpetta’s precocious ten year old niece. Who she gives wine to occasionally, wtf??
In place of characterization, Cornwell has her characters smoke obsessively and do things abstractedly. Seriously, she uses abstractedly to a ridiculous degree. The writing in general is kind of sluggish. While mildly interesting, the story didn’t propel me forward.
The clues are a bit of a stretch and at one point become ridiculously technical. There is a side story where Scarpetta’s boyfriend is a rapist who is never brought to justice, which is a record scratch to say the least.
All in all I don’t think I’ll be reading anymore in the series. It wasn’t awful or anything, but it wasn’t terribly compelling either.