Book Summary and Reviews of Red Mist by Patricia Cornwell

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Cloggie Downunder

too long!
Red Mist is the 19th book in the Kay Scarpetta series by American author, Patricia D. Cornwell. Forensic pathologist, Kay Scarpetta visits an inmate at the Georgia Prison For Women, a woman who sexually assaulted Scarpetta’s now-deceased deputy chief, Jack Fielding, in his youth, and bore his daughter, who herself became a brilliant and vicious murderess. As a result of the visit, Kay feels manipulated into meeting with former NY assistant DA, Jaime Berger, and her paranoia is justified as she finds herself re-examining a nine-year-old multiple slaying in Savannah. While the plot in this Scarpetta installment is very good, the execution suffers from excessive trivial detail. It is written as a first person narrative with an abundance of repetition as well as bits of menu, food commentary, and preachy nutritional advice interspersed. The narrator comes across as whiny, arrogant and quite paranoid. The remaining significant characters are flat (the reader has met them in previous books and Cornwell apparently deems no depth is required of these characters now). Astute readers will pick the most important clue in the first tenth of the book, but the exact who, how and why of it make, nonetheless, a good read. If the heroine was less abrasive, the other characters a little less stale and the story condensed from the 500 pages it takes to cover 48 hours, this would be an excellent read.

Claire Laura Paterson

Patricia Cornwell : RED MIST ..
After reading all of Patricia Cornwell's series with Scarpetta, Lucy, Marino & the elusive Benton Wesley, I had amazingly high hopes that this time Patricia wouldn't bombard me with abbreviated agencies and ruin the reputations of much cherished characters.

I decided to give her one last try to win me over and she has done it! I have raised the rating to 'good' because I feel she has mellowed in her elevation of Scarpetta. Which was starting to bug me, and she left Marino alone this time, Lucy wasn't as crazy chick which is a shame because this is what we know and love. Benton was as FBI as they come, so all I know is he has silver hair (again)

A thoroughly enjoyable read, not scary and at a slower pace than normal, so you have time to register facts as you go along.

I feel Cornwell could have been stronger with her approach and owned what she was saying in the story, brilliant scientific knowledge and research as always, and for once she describes areas in detail that really make you feel a part of it.

judith warren

Red Mist
I so loved Cromwell's early books. Somehow, along the way, she has turned way too dark for me to read. In Red Mist there was no coming up for air. Kay Scarpetta hated the world. Word after word, sentence after sentence, paragraph after paragraph, chapter after chapter, is filled with anger, rage, paranoia. I didn't know that one author could be so negative. Couldn't finish the book.

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