Post by Charlynn on Jul 4, 2013 15:11:16 GMT -5
Black Notice by Patricia Cornwell
More than a year has gone by since Benton's murder, but no one has moved past it - not Lucy, not Marino, and certainly not Kay. Yet to really grieve, Kay is thrown when a letter written by Benton before his death... as if he was anticipating his own mortality... is given to her, in it her ex beseeching her to finally start the mourning process. Before she can truly do what has been asked of her, Kay becomes embroiled in yet another fantastic mystery; Lucy's life is once more put at risk because of her reckless need to prove herself; and Kay and Marino find themselves at the center of a plot to destroy their careers, thanks to the new, ambitious, and powerful police chief in town. What is even stranger is that, by the end of the novel, all three stories converge into one thanks to a transatlantic serial killer with connections to a global organized crime ring. It's an all-consuming, engrossing, distraction of a case, one that, as Marino conjectures, screams of Benton, a case Kay's partner suggests was sent their way to deter them from discovering that Benton's "murder" was nothing more than an elaborate plot to facilitate the profiler going undercover. Of course, Marino's wrong, but his actions - along with a trip to Paris which brings Kay into contact with a young, confident, insightful Interpol agent - finally gets Kay to do what more than a year's time could not: she reads the report of Benton's death and breaks down. She cries for her loss.
Black Notice does many things right. First and foremost, it introduces Jay Talley, a new character and a new love interest for Kay, one just brimming with complications. Yes, Benton was married when he and Kay started their relationship, but Talley's young - just a few years older than Lucy, in fact. Speaking of Lucy, she's also connected to Talley professionally, both of them associated with ATF. Marino doesn't like him, but that's no great surprise, and Talley can't stand Marino. He's Interpol - meaning he's stationed in France, he's pompous and assuming, he has daddy issues, and he's unbelievably charming.
Besides creating this new character in Black Notice, Cornwell also focused much of the novel on her pre-established characters, delving into their continued evolutions. While the screaming matches between Kay and Marino tended towards the redundant, they also proved necessary. Marino really can't communicate otherwise, and the fights helped Kay to confront other, long-buried emotions. There was also a fascinating and long-anticipated scene between Kay and her sister, Dorothy, Lucy's estranged mother. Finally, the novel featured the interesting element of Kay essentially battling against herself, her world of justice, law, science, and medicine being used against her from the inside. Despite all of these positives, though, it was frustrating that, yet again, the real story - that of Cornwell's main characters - was told through the vehicle of such a sensational and improbable mystery.
Kay herself admits that the suspect she's chasing throughout the novel has a condition only found in just one out of every one billion people. Granted, there aren't an obscene amount of chief medical examiners in the world either, so it would be understandable for each one to encounter several unusual cases through their careers, but really what are the chances that, of all the jurisdictions around the globe, a case involving hypertrichosis docks itself in Kay's neck of the woods? Certainly not many, especially when it's one such strange coincidence or strange set of circumstances after the other with Cornwell's heroine. The cases she features in her Scarpetta series can be entertaining without being so unique. They can be grisly and horrifying, complex and intricate, but they also need to be more believable. Otherwise, the entire series and the characters featured in them become compromised.
Two out of Five Stars
More than a year has gone by since Benton's murder, but no one has moved past it - not Lucy, not Marino, and certainly not Kay. Yet to really grieve, Kay is thrown when a letter written by Benton before his death... as if he was anticipating his own mortality... is given to her, in it her ex beseeching her to finally start the mourning process. Before she can truly do what has been asked of her, Kay becomes embroiled in yet another fantastic mystery; Lucy's life is once more put at risk because of her reckless need to prove herself; and Kay and Marino find themselves at the center of a plot to destroy their careers, thanks to the new, ambitious, and powerful police chief in town. What is even stranger is that, by the end of the novel, all three stories converge into one thanks to a transatlantic serial killer with connections to a global organized crime ring. It's an all-consuming, engrossing, distraction of a case, one that, as Marino conjectures, screams of Benton, a case Kay's partner suggests was sent their way to deter them from discovering that Benton's "murder" was nothing more than an elaborate plot to facilitate the profiler going undercover. Of course, Marino's wrong, but his actions - along with a trip to Paris which brings Kay into contact with a young, confident, insightful Interpol agent - finally gets Kay to do what more than a year's time could not: she reads the report of Benton's death and breaks down. She cries for her loss.
Black Notice does many things right. First and foremost, it introduces Jay Talley, a new character and a new love interest for Kay, one just brimming with complications. Yes, Benton was married when he and Kay started their relationship, but Talley's young - just a few years older than Lucy, in fact. Speaking of Lucy, she's also connected to Talley professionally, both of them associated with ATF. Marino doesn't like him, but that's no great surprise, and Talley can't stand Marino. He's Interpol - meaning he's stationed in France, he's pompous and assuming, he has daddy issues, and he's unbelievably charming.
Besides creating this new character in Black Notice, Cornwell also focused much of the novel on her pre-established characters, delving into their continued evolutions. While the screaming matches between Kay and Marino tended towards the redundant, they also proved necessary. Marino really can't communicate otherwise, and the fights helped Kay to confront other, long-buried emotions. There was also a fascinating and long-anticipated scene between Kay and her sister, Dorothy, Lucy's estranged mother. Finally, the novel featured the interesting element of Kay essentially battling against herself, her world of justice, law, science, and medicine being used against her from the inside. Despite all of these positives, though, it was frustrating that, yet again, the real story - that of Cornwell's main characters - was told through the vehicle of such a sensational and improbable mystery.
Kay herself admits that the suspect she's chasing throughout the novel has a condition only found in just one out of every one billion people. Granted, there aren't an obscene amount of chief medical examiners in the world either, so it would be understandable for each one to encounter several unusual cases through their careers, but really what are the chances that, of all the jurisdictions around the globe, a case involving hypertrichosis docks itself in Kay's neck of the woods? Certainly not many, especially when it's one such strange coincidence or strange set of circumstances after the other with Cornwell's heroine. The cases she features in her Scarpetta series can be entertaining without being so unique. They can be grisly and horrifying, complex and intricate, but they also need to be more believable. Otherwise, the entire series and the characters featured in them become compromised.
Two out of Five Stars