Dr. Kay Scarpetta Series
1. "Postmortem"	2. "Body of Evidence"	3. "All That Remains"
4. "Cruel & Unusual"	5. "The Body Farm"	6. "From Potter's Field"
7. "Cause of Death"	8. "Unnatural Exposure"	9. "Point of Origin"
"Scarpetta's Winter Table"	10. "Black Notice"	11. "The Last Precinct"

"Postmortem" Charles Scribner's Sons, 1990, HC Reviewed on 11/21/00
From Amazon hardcover paperback audio abridged unabridged		A serial killer is on the loose in Richmond. Three women have died, brulized and strangled in bizarre murders in their own bedrooms. What do the women have in common? Nothing, it seems, not physical type, not occupation, not a particular neighborhood. The killer apperntly strikes at random. The only consistency is that he commits his crimes on Saturday mornings. When Dr. Kay Scarpetta, chief medical examiner for the Commonwealth of Virginia, is awakened at 2:33 A.M., she knows the news is bad. the murderer has struck again. His victim is thirty-year-old physician Lori Peterson, a Harvard Medical School grad who, with her young husband, had looked forward to a bright future. Now she's dead, and Scarpetta fears that still more victims may follow unless she can come up with some new scientific evidence to help the police. Follow Scarpetta into the medical examiner's office and the autopsy room. Look throught the microscope with her as she uses research techniques to track the killer. Learn about FBI profiling, DNA printing, and how the police, state and federal agencies work for and against each other. Learn to know Scarpetta, divorced, caring temporarily for her ten-year-old niece, Lucy, a bit leery of emotional involvement, even with an attractive man such as Bill Boltz. Scarpetta cares passionately about Lucy and about the integrity of her work. Not everybody is pleased to have a woman in a powerful chief medical examiner's job. Somebody may even want to ruin Scarpetta's career and reputation. Still more disturbing, somebody may be using her office to subvert the hunt for the serial killer. Scarpetta will learn just how vulnerable she is.
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"Body of Evidence" Charles Scribner's Sons, 1991 Reviewed on 11/21/00
From Amazon paperback audio abridged unabridged		Someone is stalking Beryl Madison. Someone who spies on her and makes threatening, onscene phone calls to the reclusive author. Terrified, Beryl flees to Key West. But, eventually, she must return to her Richmond home. The very night she arrives, Beryl inexplicably invites her killer in... Thus begins for Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Kay Scarpetta the investigation of a crime that is as convoluted as it is bizarre. Why would Beryl open the door to someone who brutally slashed and then nearly decapitated her? Did she know her killer? Adding to the intrigue is Beryl's enigmatic relationship with a Pulitzer Prize- winning author and the disappearance of Beryl's manuscript. Pressure from Beryl's agent and the attorney general, as well as the mysterious reappearance of Scarpetta's former lover, lawyer Mark James, force her beyond the boundaries of forensic medicine. She must retrace beryl's footsteps. An investigation that begins in the laboratory with microscopes and lasers leads Scarpetta deep into a nightmare that soon becomes her own.
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"All That Remains" Smithmark Publishers, 1997 (reissue) Reviewed on 11/21/00
From Amazon hardcover paperback audio abridged unabridged		Fred and Deborah Harvey are the lastest victims in a string of mysterious killings in the Williamsburg, Virginia area that the press has called the Couple Killings. Under pressure from Pat Harvey, the nation's "drug czar" and mother of one of the victims, and at odds with the FBI which is withholding evidence, Chief Medical Examiner Kay Scarpetta uses her exceptional ability as a forensic pathologist to solve the crime.
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"Cruel & Unusual" Charles Scribner's Sons, 1993, HC Reviewed on 11/21/00
From Amazon hardcover paperback audio abridged unabridged		11:05 PM. Convicted murderer Ronnie Joe Waddell is pronounced dead in the Commonwealth of Virginia's electric chair. In the morgue, Dr. Kay Scarpetta has been waiting for Wadell's body. It's a strange feeling, preparing for an autopsy before the subject is dead. But Scarpetta's been here before. As Virginia's chief medical examiner, she knows the tension of watching the clock as the execution hour draws near. Waddell's death isn't the only newsworthy event on this cold December night. Three hours after thirteen-year-old Eddie Hath goes out to a convenience store to buy a can of soup, his nude, grotesquely wounded body is found propped against a dumpster. Waddell's execution, the attack on Eddie - the two events seem unrelated until Scarpetta and Richmond police lieutenant Pete Marino remember that Waddell arranged his victim in a strikingly similar position to Eddie's. And then there's a new murder, the most puzzling of all. The crime scenes yield few clues: old bloodstains, fragments of feather, and - most baffling - a bloody fingerprint that points Scarpetta to the one suspect who could not possibly have committed the murder. And somewhere in Virginia's corridors of power, perhaps even in her own office, lurks an enemy who will destroy Scarpetta unless she can produce the proof that will clear her name. With some help from her seventeen-year-old niece, computer whiz Lucy, as well as from her loyal friend Lieutenant Marino and FBI agent Benton Wesley, Scarpetta musters all her forensic expertise and investigative skills to uncover shocking secrets that will have vast repercussions.
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"The Body Farm" Charles Scribner's Sons, 1993, HC Reviewed on 11/21/00
From Amazon paperback audio abridged		Little Emily Steiner is dead. She left a North Carolina church meeting late one October afternoon and strolled along a lakeside path toward her house two miles away. Who met her on the path? Who followed her home, kidnapped her from her beroom, and left her body by the lake days later? it's puzzling and terrifying crime, reminiscent of the work of serial killer Temple Gault, who has long eluded Dr. Kay Scarpetta and the FBI's Investigative Support Unit in Quantico, Virginia, where Scarpetta consults as a forensic pathologist. At the request of the North Carolina authorities, Scarpetta and her colleagues, Benton Wesley and Pete Marino, fly to the mountains near Asheville to assist. They find a mother in mourning and an investigation in disarray. It's particularly frustrating to work a homicide after the fact. An inexperienced pathologist missed or misinterpreted some of the evidence, leaving Scarpetta with inconclusive medical and laboratory reports, and photographs that only raise questions. What, for instance, is the strange mark on the child's body that causes Scarpetta to plead with a reluctant judge for an exhumation? What is the meaning of trace evidence from a plant not indigenous to the Carolinas? And where did the killer obtain the unique blaze-orange duct tape, with which he bound Emily and her mother? Most puzzling of all is the question of when Emily died. She disappeared the night of October 1. Her nude body was found a week later. Scarpetta's obsession with time leads her to The Body Farm, a little-known research facility in Tennessee where, with the help of some grisly experiments, she might discover the answer. It is Scarpetta alone who can interpret the forensic hieroglyphics that eventually reveal a solution to the case as staggering as it is Horrifying. Scarpetta not only must search for a killer, she must endeavor to help her niece Lucy, who is accused of espionage while interning at the FBI's highly classified Engineering and Research Facility in Quantico. And she must reach out to Marino, who retreats deeply into a strange relationship that may wreck his career and ruin his life. Scarpetta, too, is vulnerable, as she opens herself to the first physical and emotional bond she has felt in far too long a time.
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"From Potter's Field" Berkley Book, August 1996, PB Reviewed on 11/21/00
From Amazon hardcover paperback audio abridged		Upon examining a dead woman found in snowbound Central Park, Dr. Kay Scarpetta, Chief Medical Examiner of Virginia and consulting forensic pathologist for the FBI, immediately recognizes the grisly work of Temple Brooks Gault, a bold, brilliant killer from her past. Soon she realizes that Gault's murderd are but a violent chain leading up to one ultimate kill: Scarpetta herself. Now she must stay her own fears and keep step with a psychopath who is always one step ahead, both everywhere and nowhere. But even with the help of her FBI and police comrades, Scarpetta knows the endgame is hers alone to play. Having repeatedly plunged into the madness of Gault's mind, Scarpetta must finally descend into his terrifying home in the subway tunnels beneath New York City. And confront the one killer who woud not be caught.
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"Cause of Death" G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1996, HC Reviewed on 4/14/01
From Amazon hardcover paperback audio abridged unabridged CD		New year's Eve and the final murder scene of Virginia's bloodest year since the Civil War takes Scarpetta thirty feet below the Elizabeth River's icy surface. A scuba diver, Ted Eddings, is dead, an ivestigative reporter who was a favorite at the Medical Examiner's Office. Was Eddings probing the frigid depths of the Inactive Ship yard for a story, or simply diving for sunken trinkets? And why did Scarpetta receive a phone call from someone reporting the death before the police were notified? With the advent of a second murder - this one hitting even closer to home - the case envelops Scarpetta, her neice Lucy and police captian Pete Marino in a world where both cutting-edge technology and old-fashioned detective work are critial offensive weapons. Together they follow the trail of death to a well of violence as dark and forbidding as the water that swirled over Ted Eddings.
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"Unnatural Exposure" G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1997, HC Reviewed on 4/15/01
From Amazon paperback audio abridged unabridged CD		Dr. Kay Scarpetta is newly returned from Dublin, where she was called to examine the remians of a murder victim whose limbs and head were expertly severed - a signature of a cunning serial killer on the loose again after an eight-year sabbatical - when the same killer apparently strikes again, this time much too close to home. The remains of a woman found in a Virginia landfill, her body dismembered in the same expert way as in the Dublin case. After Scarpetta investigates the murder scene, the killer boldly cantacts her through the Internet, inviting her to download photos of the murder victim and signing off with a chilling screen name: deadoc. Scarpetta soon discovers inconsistencies between this new case and the serial murders she has been investigating. With the help of her niece Lucy, an FBI computer expert, she takes an extraordinary virtual tour of the background of the e-mailed photo. but even as Scarpetta and Lucy probe illuminating details in virtual reality, local authorities try to wrap up the case by charging the man who discovered the body. When Scarpetta determines that the victim was exposed to a rare smallpox-like virus before she died and, later, that she herself may have been infected, she realizes that she is up against a killer with access to an incredibly sophisticated arsenal of deadly force - a killer with a specific animus directly toward her.
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"Point of Origin" G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1998, HC Reviewed on 4/15/01
From Amazon hardcover paperback audio unabridged		Virginia's chief medical examiner Dr. Kay Scarpetta is getting ready for a romantic holiday with her retired-FBI-profiler boyfriend, Benton Wesley, when she receives a cryptic and foreboding letter: "Hey DOC, Tick Tock, Sawed bone and fire," it begins. Even more creepy, the taunting note has been signed by Carrie Grethen, the psychotic killer Kay helped send to a psychiatric facility for going on a murder spree with Temple Gault. Benton believes that Grethen - who also happens to be the former lover of Scarpetta's niece Lucy - has big plans for a comeback. And before Kay and Benton can leave for their trip and discuss it further, Scarpetta is called upon to don yet another professional hat, that of a "consulting forensic pathologist" for the federal government. Someone has burned a highfalutin horse ranch and all of its contents, including a human being, to the ground. Worse, Grethen has escaped and is on the loose and closer to Kay and her beloved than she knows.
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"Scarpetta's Winter Table" Wyrick & Company, 1998, HC Reviewed on 4/15/01
From Amazon hardcover		This engaging novelette provides an intimate look into the personal lives of Kay Scarpetta, Pete Marino, and Lucy Farinelli as they celebrate the week between Christmas and New Year's. Virginia's intrepid chief medical examiner, her detective sidekick, and her niece (a special agent with ATF) get together for some holiday food and drink - and the unexpected joy of befriending a lonely boy. In the kitchen, this tenacious trio put together suck delightful and wicked concoctions as Marino's "cause-of-death eggnog," Lucy's "felonious cookies," ans Scarpetta's famous pizza and stew, guaranteed to clean out any freezer or pantry. This is not a book for series cooks, but a delicious and heartwarming tale for readers who want to test their wits - and their culinary skills - against this indomitable crime team.
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"Black Notice" G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1999, HC Reviewed on 5/2/01
From Amazon hardcover paperback audio abridged unabridged		The Nightmare begins when a cargo ship arriving at Richmond's Deep Water Terminal from Belgium is discovered to be transporting a locked, sealed container holding the decomposed remains of a stowaway. The autopsy performed by Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Kay Scarpetta initially reveals neither a cause of death nor an identification. But the victim's personal effects and an odd tattoo take Scarpetta on a hunt for information that leads to Interpol's headquarters in Lyon, France, where she receives critical instructions: Go to the Paris morgue to receive forbidden, secret evidence and then return to Virginia to carry out a mission. It is a mission that could ruin her career.
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"The Last Precinct" G. P. Putnam's Sons, 2000, HC Reviewed on 5/2/01
From Amazon hardcover paperback audio abridged unabridged CD		It's inconceivable that in the aftershocks of The Werewolf's capture, Virginia's Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Kay Scarpetta is the object of suspicion and criminal investigation. And the nightmare perpetuated on Scapetta's doorstep continues as she discovers that the Werewolf murders may have extended to New York City and into the darkest corners of her past. When a formidable prosecutor, a female assistant district attorney from New York, is brought into the case, Scarpetta must struggle to make what she knows to be the thruth inward to ask, Where do you go when there is nowhere left? The answer is the Last Precinct. As ever collegue Pete Marino and her neice Lucy's help, but in the end Scarpetta's life will never be the same.
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Judy Hammer, Virginia West and Andy Brazil Series
1. "Hornet's Nest"	2. "Southern Cross"	3. "Isle of Dogs"

"Hornest's Nest" G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1997, HC Reviewed on 4/15/01
From Amazon hardcover paperback audio abridged		It's a city of ambition and pride, a city long ago dubbed "the hornet's nest of America." A swarming symbol dominates the badge of the police department that protects it - the image of a darting, restless fighter: the whirling dervish of a hornet. Like the violence that swirls around Charlotte during a long, hot summer, the hornet traces a dark, angry path, touching down unexpectedly, bringing stings of surprise wherever it lands. With Charlotte as the background, delve into the core of the metropolitan police departmentthrough the lives of a dynamic trio of heroes: Andy Brazil, an ambitious young reporter and an eager - sometimes too eager - volunteer cop; Police Chief Judy Hammer, the professionally strong yet personally troubled guardian of Charlotte's law and order; and her deputy chief, Virginia West, a genuine head-turner who is married to her job. To walk the beat with hammer, West, and Brazil is to learn the inner secrets of police work - the tension and the tedium, the hilarity and the heartbreak, the unexpected pump of adrenaline and the rush of courage that can lead to heroics... or death.
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"Southern Cross" G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1998, HC Reviewed on 4/15/01
From Amazon hardcover paperback		The setting is Richmond, Virginia, where former Charlotte police chief Judy Hammer has been brought, by an NIJ grant, to clean up the police force. Reeling form the recent death of her husband, and resented by the Richmond polics force, city manager, and mayor, Hammer is jioned by her deputy chief, Virginia West, and rookie Andy Brazil on the most difficult assignment of her career. In the face of overwhelming public scrutiny, the trio must find the link between the desecration of Confederate president Jefferson Davis's statue and the brutal murder of an elderly woman.
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"Isle of Dogs" G. P. Putnam's Sons, 2001, HC Reviewed on 11/30/02
From Amazon hardcover audio abridged unabridged CD		Chaos breaks loose when the governor of Virginia orders that speed traps be painted on all streets and highways, warning that speeders will be caught by monitoring aircraft flying overhead. But the eccentric Isle of Tangier, fourteen miles off the coast of Virginia in the Chesapeake Bay, responds by declaring war on its own state. Judy Hammer, newly installed as the superintendent of the Virginia State Police, and Andy Brazil, a state trooper and Hammer's right hand and confidant, find themselves at their wits' end as they try to protect the public from the politicians - and vice versa - in this pitch-perfect, darkly comic romp.

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