New York Times bestselling author Patricia Cornwell brings back Kay Scarpetta, consulting forensic pathologist for the FBI's Behavioral Science Unit, in her grittiest and most compelling novel. In rural North Carolina, the brutal murder of eleven-year-old Emily Steiner has shaken a small town. But more disturbing are the details of the crimes, chillingly reminiscent of the handiwork of a serial killer who has eluded the unit for years. Into this volatile atmosphere comes Scarpetta's ingenious, rebellious niece Lucy, an FBI intern with a promising future in Quantico's computer engineering facility--until she is accused of a shocking security violation. While coming to terms with Lucy, Kay must conduct a grisly forensic investigation at a clandestine research facility in Tennessee known as the Body Farm. There she will find more answers to Emily Steiner's murder--and evidence that paints a picture of a crime more horrifying than she imagined . . .

From Publishers Weekly
Cornwell ( Body of Evidence ; All That Remains ) casts a wider, surer narrative net in the latest case set for her increasingly complex heroine, Kay Scarpetta, Chief Medical Examiner for the Commonwealth of Virginia. As an FBI consultant, Scarpetta investigates the North Carolina murder of 11-year-old Emily Steiner, whose mutilation suggests the M.O. of an escaped killer met previously in Cruel and Unusual. Forensic clues from the body's second autopsy prompt Scarpetta to request that certain experiments be made at the University of Tennessee's Decay Research Facility, known as the Body Farm. Meanwhile, she, Pete Marino of the Richmond, Va., police, and her new love interest, FBI Unit Chief Benton Wesley investigate the apparent suicide (from autoerotic asphyxiation) of the local FBI agent in charge of the case. Then, Scarpetta's computer-whiz niece Lucy, working at FBI headquarters at Quantico, is charged with violating security. During her travels between North Carolina and Virginia, Scarpetta worries about both the less-than-forthcoming Lucy and Marino, who becomes emotionally entangled with Emily's beautiful stricken mother. Results at the Body Farm lead her to a convincing, if abrupt, resolution. Deeper characterization and a more intricate plot mark this fifth in a consistently compelling series. 500,000 first printing; paperback rights to Berkley; audio rights to Simon & Schus ter; Literary Guild selection. Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
Following the disappointing Cruel and Unusual (Scribner, 1993), one wondered whether Cornwell was getting bored with her popular Kay Scarpetta series. After all, that novel featured a tired, confused plot and cardboard characters. But, happily, Cornwell is back at the top of her form here. Sure, there are still the red herrings and the plot contrivances, but what makes The Body Farm stand out is the deeper characterizations, especially in the depiction of Scarpetta's relationship with her troubled niece, Lucy. "It seems this is all about people loving people who don't love them back," says Scarpetta, referring to the murder of an 11-year-old girl, which she is investigating as an FBI consultant. But this is also the novel's haunting theme: homicide detective Pete Morino, jealous of Scarpetta's affair with FBI Unit Chief Benton Wesley, becomes involved with the dead girl's mother; Lucy, in love with a calculating fellow FBI student, is accused of violating agency security. Emotionally satisfying reading.--Wilda Williams, "Library Journal"Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
Cornwell's name on the cover of a book virtually guarantees both instant best-seller status and enthusiastic raves from reviewers and readers alike. Her latest story is no exception, as popular heroine Dr. Kay Scarpetta is called in to help investigate the brutal slaying of an 11-year-old girl. Scarpetta believes the child may have been the victim of Temple Gault, a macabre, demented serial killer who remains at large despite Scarpetta's determined efforts to track him down. It turns out that Scarpetta is at least partly right about Gault, but the child's death is more complicated and horrifying than even the I can't be surprised anymore Scarpetta can imagine. Cornwell's plot is visceral, graphic, and frightening in a way that's vaguely reminiscent of Silence of the Lambs. Her writing is masterful, and she provides evocative backgrounds, provocative characters, and enough ghoulish specifics about autopsies and dead bodies to induce weeks of nightmares. Scarpetta, as usual, is a tenacious, principled investigator who's the one voice of reason in a story fraught with bizarre unreason. This deserves a place in every mystery collection. Emily Melton

From Kirkus Reviews
Virginia Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Kay Scarpetta (Cruel and Unusual, 1993, etc.) has given up smoking and strayed far enough from her high-pressure office to act as a consulting profiler for the FBI, but her nerves are just as frayed at Quantico, especially since her rebellious niece Lucy is a computer-whiz trainee for the Engineering Research Facility down the hall. Scarpetta's latest case is ugly even by her standards: the North Carolina sex murder of Emily Steiner, 11, whose forensics are so contradictory that Scarpetta wants to exhume her for a second autopsy. Before she can do so, North Carolina Bureau investigator Max Ferguson, returning home from Quantico, dies, apparently of autoerotic asphyxia, and his local contact winds up in the hospital with a heart attack. Scarpetta scurries to work out how and why Temple Gault, an apparent serial killer who's the leading suspect in Emily's murder, might have killed Ferguson--and what to make of her gruesome discovery in Ferguson's freezer. No sooner has she finished the grisly re-examination of Emily, than word comes from Quantico that Lucy's sneaked into an unauthorized area after hours and is getting washed out of the program. Scarpetta's two nightmares come together with a crash--a car crash that sends Lucy to the hospital and Scarpetta out to the field to run forensics on her own automobile. As always, tension is ratcheted up, rather unconvincingly, by plots whose interconnection is never quite clear and by the constant friction between Scarpetta and her niece; her sister; her FBI lover, Benton Wesley; her boorish buddy, Capt. Pete Marino; and Emily's mother, with whom Marino is having an affair. But beneath the welter of quarrels and coincidences is as insidious a study of evil as Cornwell has turned in. (Literary Guild main selection) -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Time
Among the grittiest of this season's crime novels...convincing...chilling.

People
All the pacing and suspense Cornwell fans have come to expect.

Booklist
Reminiscent of The Silence of the Lambs. Her writing is masterful.

Book Description
When an eleven-year-old girl is found murdered, Kay Scarpetta, Chief Medical Examiner for the Commonwealth of Virginia, gets another chance at stopping one of the most heartless and horrifying serial killers of her career: the demented Temple Gault.

Download Description
Cornwell brings back Kay Scarpetta, consulting forensic pathologist for the FBI's Behavioral Science Unit, in her most compelling novel. In rural North Carolina, the brutal murder of an 11-year-old has shaken the town with its bizarre details. Now, Kay must conduct a grisly investigation at a clandestine facility in Tennessee known as The Body Farm.

Simon & Schuster
Little Emily Steiner left a church meeting late one afternoon and strolled toward home along a lakeside path; a week later, her nude body was discovered, bound in blaze-orange duct tape. Called by the North Carolina authorities, forensic pathologist Kay Scarpetta recognizes similarities to the gruesome work of a serial killer who has long eluded the FBI But as she tries to make sense of the evidence, she is left with questions that lead her to the Body Farm, a little known research facility in Tennessee where, with the help of some grisly experiments, she might discover the answer. It is Scarpetta alone who can interpret the forensic hieroglyphics that eventually reveal a solution to the case as staggering as it is horrifying. But she must also endeavor to help her niece, Lucy, who is embroiled in controversy at Quantico. And Scarpetta, too, is vulnerable, as she opens herself to the first physical and emotional bond she has felt in far too long a time. Tenacious and brilliant, tender and gentle, this is Scarpetta even more realized and poignant than we've seen her before--in a stunning achievement from a best-selling author at the peak of her powers.

ANNOTATION

Dr. Kay Scarpetta, consulting pathologist for the FBI Forensic Science Unit, must deal with the truly horrific as she seeks to understand the murder of an eleven-year-old girl in rural North Carolina. The details remind her of a serial killer who has eluded the unit for years. What is required is a series of grisly experiments at a little known facility called the Body Farm. Scarpetta must re-interpret some badly botched evidence and interpret the forensic hieroglyphics to reveal an answer that is as stunning as it is horrifying. "Cornwell seems to get better and better."- -Los Angeles Times. 320pp.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Little Emily Steiner is dead. She left a North Carolina church meeting late one October afternoon and strolled along a lakeside path toward her house two miles away. Who met her on the path? Who followed her home, kidnapped her from her bedroom, and left her body by the lake days later? It's a puzzling and terrifying crime, reminiscent of the work of serial killer Temple Gault, who has long eluded Dr. Kay Scarpetta and the FBI's Investigative Support Unit in Quantico, Virginia, where Scarpetta consults as a forensic pathologist. At the request of the North Carolina authorities, Scarpetta and her colleagues, Benton Wesley and Pete Marino, fly to the mountains near Asheville to assist. They find a mother in mourning and an investigation in disarray. It's particularly frustrating to work a homicide after the fact. An inexperienced pathologist missed or misinterpreted some of the evidence, leaving Scarpetta with inconclusive medical and laboratory reports, and photographs that only raise questions. What, for instance, is the strange mark on the child's body that causes Scarpetta to plead with a reluctant judge for an exhumation? What is the meaning of trace evidence from a plant not indigenous to the Carolinas? And where did the killer obtain the unique blaze-orange duct tape, with which he bound Emily and her mother? Most puzzling of all is the question of when Emily died. She disappeared the night of October 1. Her nude body was found a week later. Scarpetta's obsession with time leads her to The Body Farm, a little-known research facility in Tennessee where, with the help of some grisly experiments, she might discover the answer. It is Scarpetta alone who can interpret the forensic hieroglyphics that eventually reveal a solution to the case as staggering as it is horrifying. Scarpetta not only must search for a killer, she must endeavor to help her niece Lucy, who is accused of espionage while interning at the FBI's highly classified Engineering and Research Fac

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly

Cornwell ( Body of Evidence ; All That Remains ) casts a wider, surer narrative net in the latest case set for her increasingly complex heroine, Kay Scarpetta, Chief Medical Examiner for the Commonwealth of Virginia. As an FBI consultant, Scarpetta investigates the North Carolina murder of 11-year-old Emily Steiner, whose mutilation suggests the M.O. of an escaped killer met previously in Cruel and Unusual. Forensic clues from the body's second autopsy prompt Scarpetta to request that certain experiments be made at the University of Tennessee's Decay Research Facility, known as the Body Farm. Meanwhile, she, Pete Marino of the Richmond, Va., police, and her new love interest, FBI Unit Chief Benton Wesley investigate the apparent suicide (from autoerotic asphyxiation) of the local FBI agent in charge of the case. Then, Scarpetta's computer-whiz niece Lucy, working at FBI headquarters at Quantico, is charged with violating security. During her travels between North Carolina and Virginia, Scarpetta worries about both the less-than-forthcoming Lucy and Marino, who becomes emotionally entangled with Emily's beautiful stricken mother. Results at the Body Farm lead her to a convincing, if abrupt, resolution. Deeper characterization and a more intricate plot mark this fifth in a consistently compelling series. 500,000 first printing; paperback rights to Berkley; audio rights to Simon & Schus ter; Literary Guild selection. (Oct.)

Library Journal

Following the disappointing Cruel and Unusual (Scribner, 1993), one wondered whether Cornwell was getting bored with her popular Kay Scarpetta series. After all, that novel featured a tired, confused plot and cardboard characters. But, happily, Cornwell is back at the top of her form here. Sure, there are still the red herrings and the plot contrivances, but what makes The Body Farm stand out is the deeper characterizations, especially in the depiction of Scarpetta's relationship with her troubled niece, Lucy. "It seems this is all about people loving people who don't love them back," says Scarpetta, referring to the murder of an 11-year-old girl, which she is investigating as an FBI consultant. But this is also the novel's haunting theme: homicide detective Pete Morino, jealous of Scarpetta's affair with FBI Unit Chief Benton Wesley, becomes involved with the dead girl's mother; Lucy, in love with a calculating fellow FBI student, is accused of violating agency security. Emotionally satisfying reading. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 6/1/94.]-Wilda Williams, "Library Journal"

BookList - Emily Melton