Point of Origin (Paperback)

Perhaps because Kate Reading has also narrated Cornwell's Unnatural Exposure and Cause of Death, her voice conveys experience and the history of what has come before, allowing listeners to hear between the lines. Using a subtle but effective range of vocal inflections, Reading lifts the characters off the page and carries them along as the plot spins ever faster, tangling Scarpetta in a snarl of arson, deceit and psychopathic murder. With her nemesis making threats and suspicious fires leaving calcified corpses, Dr. Scarpetta's long-overdue romantic getaway has gone up in smoke. It's just one more day at the morgue and Point of Origin, another hit in the popular series of Scarpetta mysteries, finds the good doctor's attitude honed to a razor sharp point.--George Laney

Review
There have been dissenting voices on the subject of Cornwell's amazing success. Did the disappointing Hornet's Nest signal that the splendid run of Kay Scarpetta thrillers was played out? Thankfully, this one sees Cornwell back on form, all cylinders firing. When the psychopathic Carrie Grethen breaks free from custody, Scarpetta and her group of intimates and associates are soon in deep water again. Blaming them for the death of her equally homicidal partner, Grethen inaugurates a campaign of terror while Kay tries to solve the problem of an incinerated body in a farmhouse. The usual riveting medical detail is matched by the kind of grisly narrative that the author is mistress of, and enthusiasts can relax in the knowledge that Cornwell's star looks set to glitter for quite some time yet. (Kirkus UK)

Does Kay Scarpetta ever have a nice day? No sooner has she been taken from the arms of her FBI lover Benton Wesley by a disquieting note from her niece Lucy's murderous ex-lover Carrie Grethen, locked up ever since The Body Farm (1994), than she gets called to the scene of a particularly horrific arson. Nineteen horses are dead at the farm of black publishing mogul Kenneth Sparkes, a longtime adversary of Scarpetta's, along with what looks like the body of Sparkes's onetime lover Claire Rawley. All indications are that the fire started in the commodious master bathroom, but since there's no sign of accelerant or fuel, Scarpetta's forced to fall back on her specialty, testimony from the corpse, which eventually leads her back in time to a series of equally inexplicable arson-murders. By now, Carrie Grethen has escaped and written to every newspaper on the East Coast that she was seduced by Lucy and framed by Scarpetta and Wesley; Scarpetta is at loggerheads with Teun McGovern, Lucy's new boss at Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms; and Scarpetta's irascible buddy Capt. Pete Marino is indulging himself in intimations of mortality that turn out to be only too well-timed. As in Scarpetta's recent cases (Unnatural Exposure, 1997, etc.), the final face-off between good and evil comes as something of an anticlimax after the trademark grueling forensics, showing once again that Cornwell's most compelling characters tend to be dead. (Kirkus Reviews)

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