I picked up this book having never read any Patricia Cornwell before after remembering that I'd seen it high up on a 'best crime novels' list. I enjoyed the book a lot, but don't think I'd rank it as one of my top crime novels of all time.

I found the characters engaging on the whole, although Marino's dialogue grated on my nerves after a while ('squirrel'? Really? Perhaps I'm just not up to date with my americanisms...). I also enjoyed the plot, which whilst not 'head under bedclothes scary' as the cover claimed, was pretty gripping.

Whilst I won't be rushing out to buy any more Cornwell just now, I will probably read more of her stuff in future and would definitely recommend her to anyone who enjoys a good crime novel. ( )

Not one of Cornwell's best. The story takes a long time to get going and the ending all seems to come at once in the last dozen or so pages. A reasonable read, but there are other Scarpetta books which are better. ( )

2002

Body of Evidence is a reasonable detective story. It has a good premise and likeable characters. The reader is very talented. I enjoyed the interplay between Scarpetta and the detective. They had a great like / dislike going on. The plot is a little dated with the smoking and the prominent gay theme, but the story is believable and changed location enough to be interesting: VA to NY to Key West. After reading a lot of detective fiction this story does not stand out as one of the best, but it is not predictable, and it is not overblown. Above average. ( )

I'm trying to read the Kay Scarpetta novels more or less in order even though I've heard it's a series you don't really have to take sequentially. So this is the second--the first being Postmortem. So far I'm having a pretty consistent opinion of the books, even though I'm only two in.

Body of Evidence is a mystery novel. And the mystery part of the book is done very well. It had me guessing a new suspect, a new motive, etc. with each chapter. That, I think, is the strong point of this novel. It manages to keep the reader hooked, and the mystery is unraveled at a reasonable pace. The forensic element that is prevalant in the book keeps it realistic--you can tell that Cornwell knows her stuff. (There were, though, a few mini-info dumps that made my eyes glaze over but nothing it was nothing I couldn't apply myself to with a little effort.)

I couldn't fault the characterization. The characters were likable, they struck me as real people. I applaud Cornwell for this. The heroine was flawed the way a human being is expected to be and she was just my type of lead female character--strong, smart, independent. (And I'll just go ahead and come out with it, I love her name. Kay Scarpetta. It's so delicious to say.) The thing about some mystery novels, though, is that I sometimes feel more in touch with the victim than the protagonist. That was the case in this book with Beryl Madison. I'm not saying this is a bad thing--it kept me reading. But I sometimes felt myself getting frustrated when I felt more of a connection to Beryl than I did Kay.

Now as much as I liked the characters and the mystery, I felt like there was something barring me from getting too caught up in the novel. I can't exactly put my finger on it, but I think the problem was Cornwell's prose. It wasn't bad by any stretch of the imagination but it didn't do much to draw me in. I noticed a few cliches as I was reading, but besides that I can't really explain my problem other than saying it just didn't draw me in. The book was good, no doubt, but it wasn't the kind of book that sticks with me.

I also felt that the ending followed in too much of the same vein as the first. I won't go beyond that so as not to spoil it.

I was also disappointed with the lack of Lucy, who was my favorite character in Postmortem.

The final verdict is 3.5 stars. It wasn't anything to get excited about, but I would recommend trying the first book if you like mysteries or forensics. ( )