Postmortem by Patricia Cornwell
I liked the book. I've liked other mysteries and thrillers more but thought it was good and appreciated it for what it was and what it did. It got me thinking and speculating at key junctions throughout and that's what I think you want in a mystery. I'm not sure exactly how I feel about it rating wise but I'll go positive and give it 3.9/5⭐ for now.
On characters; Scarpetta didn't really click for me for a good chunk of the book. There was nothing particularly wrong or off putting about her, she seemed respectable and respectful at the beginning, affected by the case but professional and detached when needed. She was also unfortunately a bit bland in places, perhaps because of being detached. This is not much of a detractor because I read a mystery for the mystery, not characterization but its nice if you can get a perfect blend. Also, something I did dislike about her was that I felt she became too preoccupied with office politics over the case, it becoming a side story taking away from the main meat of the book. As for Marino, didn't like him at first since he seemed to have a stick up his arse with Scarpetta and the case, coming off as unpleasant, but quite liked him as a character when he moved past that and was doing serious detective work on the case. Lucy was a little unbelievable to me as a 10 year old.
But yeah, pretty good. Won't go out of my way to read another. Could take her or leave her as an author but I wouldn't mind reading another if it was in front of me.
Some additional thoughts:
Point 1. I agree with not liking that Lucy faced no reprimand for her behaviour. Felt bad for her because of her circumstances but didn't like that she was swearing left, right and centre without any comment from Kay. Kay obviously isn't her parent, but she was at least in her care for the duration of the book and I felt some discipline wouldn't go amiss. I mentioned as I was going through that I didn't necessarily think Kay was the best influence anyway since she gave Lucy a glass of wine at one point.
Point 2. Also found it weird Kay wasn't that concerned about the cold calls she was getting. The book made a point of showing that the case was getting to her even from the beginning, with her having bad dreams and getting paranoid about dangers to her person. The paranoia extending in the case to start suspecting various people, including Marino at the end. Despite this, she doesn't ask Marino at any point for a favour in tracking who's been cold calling her at night. Not sure how easy that would have been to do that but felt like it was something I would ask about or at least mention were I in her position.
Point 3. On the writing. I found the style a bit odd in the first chapter, kind of clinical in its description was my first impression. Not sure if it changed a bit going forward or I just got used to it real fast because I didn't think about it after that and had no problems with the style henceforth. I see several people have mentioned that the book felt a bit like a TV episode to them. Didn't really get that feel myself but I guess I can see where you're coming from in that respect. Loved watching CSI growing up though, so even if it is like that its not a negative for me.
Point 4. On plot threads. A few criticisms about dropped plot threads that didn't really go anywhere or have a satisfying resolution. For the Matt Peterson one I believe its purely because we're seeing the story through the perspective of Kay and Marino was the one pushing that theory. Again, because it's the Medical Examiner's POV and not the lead detective, we miss some of the follow up and investigation you'd see in more traditional crime mysteries. I consider it a feature of the perspective, neither positive or negative, and something that explains the general differences we see in this book compared to others. On The Bill Boltz thread, yeah he doesn't get any consequences but what he did is notoriously hard to prosecute today, never mind back then and I think it reflects the harsh reality that by the point Abby told Marino what he did, there wasn't a lot of recourse she had to pursue justice. I like that Marino follows it up by questioning the guy and believes her but not sure anything can be done unless she decides to go public. Perhaps it'll come up again in a future book because I really felt Boltz's wife's death seemed significant and worthy of further investigation but it might be that he just remains out of the picture and escapes justice.
Point 5. Guesses & Speculation. I find half the fun of a mystery is making wild guesses throughout as you try and figure out 'whodunnit?'. And herein lies another criticism levelled at the book, we really couldn't have guessed who did it because we only meet them in the last chapter. This actually wasn't really an issue for me as I still had fun coming up with crackpot theories, though it was a little disappointing that no matter what I came up with I was never going to be right, even by chance. The afterword did mention though that part of the point was to try and make you paranoid like Kay and start 2nd guessing everyone. I think I was so focused on the culprit being a named character and someone known to Kay because I was thinking too much about tropes I'd expect to find in this genre, even though the book is meant to be non-traditional in its perspective, and because of the PC break in/evidence tampering storyline that convinced me it had to be someone we'd seen before who'd gained access to the morgue.
Point 6. Technical talk. I don't think Cornwell overdid it with the PC explanations but it did go over my head still. I just simplified it in my mind to 'someone hacked into the computer remotely and they shouldn't have been able to do that without the password, which only two people were meant to have'. Again don't think she overdid it with explaining about using DNA as evidence but there was one bit later on I think that things got a bit too technical and a bunch of acronyms were thrown at us. Had a few too many acronyms near the beginning as well and completely forgot what PERK stood for, just remembered it was an important label for part of their work.
Point 7. Dating the book. A couple people mentioned the book as being dated and I'm not sure if they meant that in a negative way or just mean that its easy to date because of things like the tech level, everyone smoking and the multiple mentions of AIDS.
Point 8. This might come off as morbid but something I actually really liked about the book is that over the course of the weeks the story takes place in, several other bodies end up coming through the morgue and Kay has other work going on. A nice nod to realism that everything else hasn't just stopped because of this one case, that there's everyday background stuff that keeps happening.
