Dust

Description

The twenty-first book in the Kay Scarpetta series, from No. 1 bestselling author Patricia Cornwell. 'America's most chilling writer of crime fiction' The Times After working on one of the worst mass killings in US history, Chief Medical Examiner Kay Scarpetta returns home to recover, but an unsettling call drives her straight back to work. The body of a young woman has been discovered inside the sheltered gates of MIT, draped in an unusual cloth and posed in a way that is too deliberate to be the killer's first strike. A preliminary examination reveals that the body is covered in a fine dust that under ultra-violet light fluoresces blood-red, emerald-green and sapphire-blue, and physical evidence links this to another series of disturbing homicides in Washington, DC. As she pieces together the fragments of evidence, Scarpetta discovers that the cases connect, yet also seem to conflict, drawing herself and her team deeper into the dark world of designer drugs, drone technology, organised crime, and shocking corruption at the highest level. Dust is a thrilling, addictive novel featuring one of the most iconic, original and compelling characters in crime fiction today. Praise for the groundbreaking series: 'One of the best crime writers writing today' Guardian 'Devilishly clever' Sunday Times 'The top gun in this field' Daily Telegraph 'Forget the pretenders. Cornwell reigns' Mirror 'The Agatha Christie of the DNA age' Express TRACE was a No.1 Sunday Times bestseller in paperback in April 2005

In 1990, Patricia Cornwell sold her first novel, Postmortem, while working at the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner in Richmond, Virginia. An auspicious debut, it went on to win the Edgar, Creasey, Anthony, and Macavity Awards, as well as the French Prix du Roman d'Aventures - the first book ever to claim all these distinctions in a single year. Growing into an international phenomenon, the Scarpetta series won Cornwell the Sherlock Award for best detective created by an American author, the Gold Dagger Award, the RBA Thriller Award, and the Medal of Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters for her contributions to literary and artistic development. Today, Cornwell's novels and iconic characters are known around the world. Beyond the Scarpetta series, Cornwell has written the definitive nonfiction account of Jack the Ripper's identity, cookbooks, a children's book, a biography of Ruth Graham, and three other fictional series based on the characters Win Garano, Andy Brazil, and Captain Callie Chase. In recent years, Cornwell has been researching space-age technologies at NASA facilities, the U.S. Space Force, and Secret Service. She's visited Scotland Yard and Interpol, always keeping up with what's current. Cornwell was born in Miami. She grew up in Montreat, North Carolina, and now lives and works in Boston.

Her genuine affection for, and interest in, her main character radiates through the novel, and her research for The Bone Bed is as thorough as ever. Where Cornwell excels is in her ability to transcend the cliches and deliver a good, old fashioned thriller that has enough CSI-style touches to draw in the forensics- obsessed fan while never taking her eye of her plotting and characters - Sunday Business Post Ireland Cornwell, who has already won more prizes than you can shake a stick at, seems to be getting better and better - City AM If you like your fiction fast-paced with a scientific twist, Cornwell delivers once again, and if you are new to Scarpetta, you are sure to be hooked by the end of the first chapter - Irish Examiner The iconic forensic consultant is as brittle as ever, and the body count is as high as Cornwell fans have come to expect. Cornwell hasn't sold 100 million novels for no good reason - Independent