Cruel and Unusual by Patricia Cornwell
11:05 P.M. 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 Waddell'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 Heath 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 this 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. Cruel and Unusual moves bestselling author Patricia D. Cornwell in dramatic new directions, confirming the extraordinary range and power of this gifted, prizewinning writer.Patricia Cornwell was born in Miami, Florida, on June 9, 1956, and raised in Montreat, North Carolina. She began working at the Charlotte Observer after graduating from Davidson College in 1979, quickly progressing from listing television shows to writing feature articles to reporting the police beat. Her prize-winning biography of Ruth Bell Graham, A Time for Remembering, was released in 1983 and won an investigative reporting award from the North Carolina Press Association for a series of pieces on prostitution and crime in downtown Charlotte. She worked in the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner in Richmond, Virginia, as a technical writer and computer analyst from 1984 to 1990. Her debut mystery thriller, Postmortem, was published by Scribner's in 1990. It was the first novel to win the Edgar, Creasey, Anthony, and Macavity prizes, as well as the French Prix du Roman d'Aventure, all in the same year, after being rejected by seven major publishing houses.
Cornwell presented Dr. Kay Scarpetta as the valiant Chief Medical Examiner of the Commonwealth of Virginia in Postmortem. After the success of her debut novel, Cornwell has authored a series of blockbusters featuring Kay Scarpetta, her detective sidekick Pete Marino, and her smart and volatile niece, Lucy Farinelli: Body of Evidence (1991), All That Remains (1992), Cruel and Unusual (1993) [which received Brill Prize for Best Detective Created by an American Author] Ruth, A Portrait: The Biography of Ruth Bell Graham was reprinted in 1997 after she updated A Time for Remembering. Cornwell was intrigued by Scotland Yard's John Grieve's statement that no one had ever tried to solve the murders committed by Jack the Ripper using current forensic evidence, so she began her own research into the serial killer's atrocities.
She chronicles her discovery of convincing evidence to prosecute famous artist Walter Sickert as the Ripper in Portrait of a Killer: Jack the Ripper--Case Closed (2002). In January 2006, the New York Times Magazine began a 15-week serialization of At Danger, starring Massachusetts State Police investigator Win Garano and his supervisor, District Attorney Monique Lamont. In the spring of 2008, the sequel, The Front, was serialized in the London Times. Both novellas were then released as books and were quickly optioned for adaptation by Lifetime Television Network, starring Daniel Sunjata and Andie MacDowell. Fox bought the film rights to the Scarpetta novels in April 2009, with Angelina Jolie starring as Dr. Kay Scarpetta. Cornwell is a founder of the Virginia Institute of Forensic Science and Medicine, a founding member of the National Forensic Academy, a member of the Advisory Board for the Forensic Sciences Training Program at the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, NYC, and a member of the Advisory Board for the Forensic Sciences Training Program at the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, NYC, and a member of the Advisory Board for the Forensic Sciences Training Program at the Office of
She's also known for her humanitarian work in animal rescue and criminal justice, as well as endowing college scholarships and advocating for reading on a national level. The creation of an ICU at Cornell's Veterinary Hospital, the archaeological excavation of Jamestown, and the scientific study of the Confederacy's submarine H.L.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9781416505402 |
| ISBN 10 | 1416505407 |
| Title | Cruel and Unusual |
| Author | Patricia Cornwell |
| Series | Kay Scarpetta |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Paperback |
| Publisher | Simon & Schuster |
| Year published | 2005-11-01 |
| Number of pages | 416 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |