Cornwell gets personal with her people

AFTER the distasteful Point Of Origin and the dismal Southern Cross last year, anyone could be forgiven for thinking Patricia Cornwell - the queen of forensic thrillers - had totally lost the plot.

Southern Cross, second in the Hornet's Nest series, 'starred' heroine, policewoman Virginia West. It never really took off so there was a lot of hope riding on Point Of Origin.

But then Cornwell took her readers on a shockfest that had less to do with a good plot than an attempt to turn chief medical examiner Kay Scarpetta into a vulnerable woman overnight. In the process she also churned readers' stomachs with overly graphic scenes of flesh being stripped from boiling bones.

Cornwell has evidently not lost the urge to shock. In this book the chief of the fingerprints and impression lab slips the skin of a dead man's hands off like a glove, 'working his own latex-sheathed hands inside them' so he can more easily take the prints. The only difference is that the inordinate amount of background activity provides a distraction to the queasy scenes.

And there is a lot going on in Black Notice, which opens a year after Scarpetta's FBI lover Benton Wesley is brutally murdered by the ruthless Carrie Gretchen.

Everyone is still down in the dumps: Scarpetta, because she still mourns Wesley; Pete Marino, because he has just been demoted to traffic duties by the new police chief, Diane Bray; and niece Lucy, because it is just in her nature to be morose and dissatisfied with life.

In the midst of all this a body turns up in a sealed container from Belgium. There are no clues except for a message scrawled on a nearby crate - 'Bon voyage le loup-garou' (have a good trip, werewolf) - and long blond hairs found on the inside of the dead man's clothing.