THE BONE BED Scarpetta, Book 20

Chief Medical Examiner Kay Scarpetta returns in Cornwell’s solid mystery series. This 20th installment is narrated, as usual, by Kate Reading, whose crisp, assertive tone personifies the intensity and raw intelligence of Dr. Scarpetta. Once again up to her elbows in a grisly murder investigation, Scarpetta speculates about connections between a booby-trapped body in the nearby bay and a missing dinosaur paleontologist from Canada. Reading portrays Scarpetta with a dark disquiet and a cynical outlook as she is in the midst of a shaky phase with her husband, Benton, and simultaneously second-guessing her relationships with both her niece, Lucy, and her longtime colleague Marino. Reading conveys Scarpetta’s new bitterness and her determination to set her world right again. N.M.C. © AudioFile 2012, Portland, Maine [Published: NOVEMBER 2012]