NEW YORK (REUTERS) – Finest-selling crime novelist Patricia Cornwell thought she was finished with writing books for good, till the coronavirus pandemic struck and with it, inspiration for a brand new novel that includes the American writer’s much-loved character, medical expert Kay Scarpetta.
Post-mortem, printed on Tuesday (Nov 30), is Cornwell’s twenty fifth Scarpetta novel, a sequence she began in 1990 with Postmortem.
Cornwell, 65, believed she had completed Scarpetta’s story with Chaos (2016), however when the world went into lockdown final 12 months, she started to marvel what the fictional forensic pathologist would make of all of it.
“I began pondering, what would Scarpetta say about all this? What would she do with this universe we dwell in now? As a result of it is not the identical one which it was once I stop doing this 5 years in the past,” the writer mentioned.
Post-mortem takes Scarpetta again to the place she began – Virginia – the place she works as chief medical expert and is confronted with a gruelling homicide case and a possible crime in outer house, a state of affairs that Cornwell totally researched.
“The best way I describe it’s completely correct. I’ve an astronaut who lived up on the house station and I labored with him on speaking about what fluids do up there. How would you deal with this? I imply, how does Nasa (Nationwide Aeronautics and House Administration) deal?” she mentioned.
Cornwell’s analysis took her to locations most individuals would by no means get to go to, together with the Secret Service headquarters in Washington and the White Home.
Regardless of having thought she was finished with writing, Cornwell mentioned she is already penning Scarpetta’s subsequent story, a troublesome homicide trial.
“She’s taken 5 years away and it is like she despatched me again to graduate faculty. She mentioned, ‘You understand what? Go hang around at Nasa. Go hang around with sensible individuals. Go be taught one thing new. You are driving me nuts.'”