Depraved Heart

‘Technology made everything better for a while and now it seems life is circling back around to the dark ages,’ so muses meticulous, pedantic chief medical examiner Dr. Kay Scarpetta in the 23rd novel penned by number one crime writer Patricia Cornwell. In a plot that spans a single day two months after the close of previous instalment Flesh and Blood, technology is responsible for igniting a new investigation when disturbing videos are anonymously sent to Kay’s phone that implicate her beloved niece Lucy in an horrific crime. But can they be showing the truth or is Lucy being framed? The originator of the forensic thriller, Patricia Cornwell wrote Postmortem, her first Scarpetta book, in 1990. The series has since won its creator the Sherlock Award for Best Detective Created by an American Author, as well as many other gongs, including the Order of Arts and Letters for her contribution to artistic and literary development. Cornwell was well placed to kick-start a genre that has since bled out into television and film, having penned Postmortum while working at the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner in Richmond, Virginia. She continues to closely research the very latest forensic technologies between writing novels, and is considered so knowledgeable on the subject that she is CNN’s forensic consultant.