Predator

It is hard to believe that Patricia Cornwell, who wrote the first ten books in the Scarpetta series, is the author of Predator The beautiful sentence structure and descriptions have morphed into something with a repetitive Dick and Jane feel. \”He kicks and kicks with his big boots until his legs are too tired to kick anymore. He slams and slams her with the stock of the shotgun until his arms are too tired to slam anymore.\” What??? One of the great things in the earlier books was how Cornwell introduced all the scientific knowledge. It was done in an artful way that made sense. This reads more like a technical manual where the info is just dumped on the reader. There is a multi-page description on how to make gelatin shooting blocks. A number of the behaviors don\’t make sense. Lucy, the computer genius, apparently never updates her passwords for a year. Like the previous book, Lucy involves Benton in another secret that is kept from Kay. Once again this further damages Benton\’s relationship with Kay. At one point Benton and Kay have a long discussion about splitting up and Kay starts planning on taking her belongings. A few chapters later they are suddenly discussing what to have for lunch and everything is okay. Marino is an incredible jerk to everyone, to the point where Kay considers firing him. He behaves in a degrading fashion to a local female cop who forgives him the minute he can spit out a coherent sentence. The characters are two dimensional, there are only the most remote forms of relationships, and there are a plethora of secondary villains with little resolution. The plot twists defy logic and there are enough loose threads to knit a sweater. Scarpetta herself says it best: \”“I’m getting tired of coincidences. There seem to have been a lot of them lately.\” I totally agree!

Ugh. Just ugh. I loved the early Scarpetta novels, but something has been happening over the last few, and I don\’t mean just the change from past to present tense and from first person to third – which I hate, BTW. Cornwell has also started including chapters from the murderer\’s point of view, so there isn\’t even any mystery. The regular characters seems to be devolving, trying to see which one can be more obnoxious than the others. The action in this story comes at you from every direction, and if you truly want to follow what\’s going on, I suggest you take notes. After a whirlwind of ferociously unconnected plot twists, the ending is a letdown, and really doesn\’t tie up any of the loose ends, although by the time I\’d finished the book, I really didn\’t care. Please, Ms. Cornwell, if you don\’t like these characters any more, stop writing about them and put us all out of our misery.

I used to love Patricia Cornwell\’s books. I bought hard copies and now am purchasing for my kindle and re-reading. The story line is passable, but the main characters have changed too much for my liking. Kay is more pompous than ever….Lucy belongs behind bars….Benton is simply there…nothing remarkable about him. The only endearing character is Marino. I\’m not sure anyone could work for this condescending know it all for long, let alone be in a relationship with her. Her character gets more and more unlikable and I think at times I need to start rooting for the perpetrators. This type of story/writing is probably why I have put down the Scarpetta books for quite awhile.

Unfortunately, I\’m inclined to agree with reviewers who are questioning first themselves. Have I missed a book? Or, who\’s writing this and slapping the name of a previously well liked and respected author on it? Unexplained questions throughout the story don\’t add suspense, they just had me going back to what had already been read, which is frustrating. What happened to make Pete Marino such a paranoid, self destructive, unlikable thug? Is there some new, albeit as yet unreported disease that explains what\’s happening to Lucy? A tumor on the pituitary gland?? Come on! For all his character contributed to this story, Benton has become a ruminating boob who may need to go back into the WitSec program. The contention and anger traded back and forth isn\’t helpful to the storyline. It simply feels like a tabloid insert for no reason whatsoever. I purchased her hard cover books from the beginning and thoroughly enjoyed them. I stopped reading Patricia Cornwell around Scarpetta # 8 because they were becoming repetitive and way too \”unfinished\”. A friend gave me her latest books from \”Black Notice\” to \”Blow Fly\”. There\’s a gap, then I have everything from \”The Scarpetta Factor\” to \”The Bone Bed\” but, since I prefer reading in sequence, I purchased the books that were missing. Predator was my 3rd purchase. There will be no more purchases of Ms Cornwell\’s efforts. I\’m not even sure I\’ll read the hard copy books I already have.

I keep buying these books in the hope that there will be a return to form but I am always disappointed. This one is the worst by far. We are now asked to stretch out imaginations to the point that Lucy is richer than Bill Gates and has a highly sophisticated computer network that the US Government, never mind the myriad super-hackers out there, have no idea exists. She then leaves the whole thing wide open without anyone noticing the breach for months. In reality the Marino phone tapping would have been noticed by any cheap call logging system, let alone Demi-God Lucy. Do some research Patricia! Secondly, I found the resurrection of Benton Wesley tiresome when it happened, as it was so clearly a case of major backtracking once Cornwell realised that she actually needed him to pad out the stories quite a bit. Now we are supposed to believe that she and the so-called love of her life live mostly apart, communicate by email and nearly seperate when the child-from-hell Lucy comes between them, despite her \’burying\’ him once. Thirdly, I just don\’t buy into the Marino falling-out. They have been close for years, with some unrequited feelings on Marino\’s side, and yet we are asked to believe that they fall out over a simple mistake on Marino\’s part. His transformation to pretendy hells angel doesn\’t work either. The last few pages are rushed and laughable, and leave the reader feeling cheated out of a fiver. Avoid!

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