Unnatural Exposure

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Four identical victims in a trash back home and five headless, limbless cadavers in Ireland provide a grisly mystery for Virginia Medical Examiner Kay Scarpetta. Is there a serial killer in Virginia at large? Thanks to a local TV reporter who received the news from her lover, Scarpetta's evil competitor, Investigator Percy Ring, the terrified populace believes that. However, the slaughtered corpses are only a bunch of false herrings meant to confuse fools like Ring. Rather than a typical serial murderer, we are faced with an enigmatic individual with ambitions to spread mutant smallpox, commit mass killings, and manipulate Scarpetta's thoughts by sending her graphic pictures of the crime sites via email coupled with mysterious words from an AOL chat room. The most inventive idea is when Lucy, Scarpetta's brilliant and beautiful niece, gives her a DataGlove and a VPL Eyephone so she can take a spooky virtual tour of the e-mailed murder scene.

Unnatural Exposure is full of snappy language, sharp character portraits of both small actors like the landfill employee Ring wrongly accuses and well-known characters like Scarpetta's tough sidekick Pete Marino, as well as fast-paced narrative about forensic scientific investigation. Besides, serial murderers are, let's face it, a stereotype. Among Cornwell's most memorable antagonists are believable liars and swindlers such as Ring, who schemes to ruin Lucy's FBI career by coming out as a lesbian. Although some readers find the ending abrupt, it's really the natural conclusion of Cornwell's thinking of human nature and less shocking than Hannibal's. Read Cornwell's views on paranoia from her Amazon.com interview to get insight into the novel's resolution. -- Mark Appelo