Sunday Salon Readings - Predator

I started reading Predator last Monday after finding the Patricia Cornwell novel on my shelves hidden from view. This book was given to me last Christmas and forgotten. Knowing there is a reason for everything my sundaysalon reading was set.

Enjoying the last sixty-four pages this Sunday Salon morning, I realized how much medical jargon including autopsy advice is used in this psychological thriller. We also get advice on of all things, methods of repelling tree blight and sadomasochist torture with the use of spiders.

Ms. Cornwell's fourteenth Kay Scarpetta mystery weaves a character plot most unlike some of her other novels. Resentment, unresolved anger, and untrustworthiness are all factors of the structure of the in-groups lassitude.

Kay has moved to Florida and is now head of the National Forensic Academy in Hollywood. Pete Marino, Scarpetta's right hand man, has joined her as the academy's head of investigations. Benton Wesley, her friend and lover, is now running a reaserch study, Predator , an acronym for Prefrontal Determinants of Aggressive-Type Overt Responsivity, a project to determine dangerous murderers neuropsychological makeup.

During testing of Basil Jenrette, Benton finds out about an unresolved murder at a Christmas store in south Florida. Pete receives a phone call from Hog about the murder of a doctor and makes threats toward Lucy, Kay's niece. Another family disappears in Florida and Scarpetta's team is called in to help. The threads are finally untangled for each event, the unblurred picture emerges, and the killer is found.

This plot has squabbles, pretense, torture, disloyalty, kidnappings, disappearances, asylums, and bodies which make the gore readable for me. No one except Patricia Cornwell could make all this gobbledygook come together as a extraordinary book for her readers. Highly recommended by joeB!