Patricia Cornwell’s ‘Postmortem’

This week I picked up the first novel in Patricia Cornwell’s Dr. Kay Scarpetta series, Postmortem. This novel differs from most “detective” novels I read, as it is really one of the first CSI novels to hit genre fiction. The story revolves around the brutal murder of a young woman, and the forensic investigation of the case led by Dr. Kay Scarpetta. Kay is the Chief Medical Examiner for the state of Virginia, and through impressive professionalism (and a little bit of protagonistic insight) begins to piece together clues in a string of horrific murders that all seem to be related in method, though none of the victims have any association with one another. Kay and homicide detective, Sergeant Pete Marino, have to tackle this case from a new perspective, while at the same time risking becoming another victim to this serial killer’s wrath.

Cornwell really changed the detective/crime genre with this novel. Written in 1990, the murders described here reflect the kind of brutality that is occasionally seen in our world, though was often overlooked in novels up until this point. There is no elderly matriarch being poisoned for her fortune. No clean murder for the motive of simple greed. This case involves a typically urban phenomena: a serial killer. The motives aren’t clearly defined, and with that uncertainty comes great confusion over who the murderer could be. Cornwell’s prose is tight and descriptive, driving home to gory details of the novel’s violence, while never becoming too heavy-handed. The narrative moves along brilliantly, and the vast majority of the novel will have readers flipping through pages well into the night. While there are moments of dryness from the clinical aspect of the novel’s medical descriptions, and some subplots could be dropped without any real change to the book’s enjoyability, Cornwell’s Postmortem is a disturbing dive into human depravity that all readers of mystery or detective novels should check out at some point.