The Body Farm

First read: 2005
Re-read: January 2016

The plot: Kay Scarpetta is called in to assist the FBI when an eleven year old girl is found murdered in a small town in North Carolina. Marks found on the girl's body seem to suggest that the killer may be Temple Brooks Gault- the killer who got away in the previous instalment of the series 'Cruel and Unusual.' However when another suspicious death occurs Kay begins to suspect that there may be more to the death of the young girl than meets the eye.

What I liked:
- The way that Cornwell uses the events of Cruel and Unusual as a starting point for The Body Farm, I liked the continuation of the story.
- Kay and Benton's relationship is beginning to develop both professionally and personally. I think it show more is pretty realistic that Kay and Benton would end up sleeping together, despite the fact that Benton is married. The pressures of their job and the fact that they work together so often and have so much in common made it inevitable. However is not nice for his wife, Connie, especially as Kay has actually been to their house for dinner in previous books.
- Lucy has a bigger part to play in the story and we get some personal revelations about her that make her a more realistic young adult rather than just being the smart, geeky niece of Scarpetta.
- After so many books we finally get to meet Dorothy (Kay's sister and Lucy's mother). She comes across as a 'love-to-hate' character and I was pleased when Kay told her what she really thought of her.
- I liked that Kay saves Marino this time - it repays Marino for the time he saved her life and shows us that Kay doesn't have to be the object of the killer's attentions in every book!
- The body farm. This was such an interesting place to read about. It is a real place and Cornwell clearly portrays the work that goes on there as vital and as respectful as possible to the people who donate their bodies to it. She is actually credited on several websites associated with the original body farm (there are now several in America) with raising awareness of what they do and with the increasing donations they received after The Body Farm was originally published in the late 1990s.

What I didn't like:
- This one is purely personal but I really struggled with the fact that the murder victim was an eleven year old girl. When I first read this book my daughter was still a baby so the age of the victim didn't really make an impact on me; in fact I had totally forgotten her age. But coincidently at the time I decided to re-read this book my daughter is now also eleven years old. This makes some of the scenes difficult to read, especially the extracts from her diary about the boy she had a crush on, the interview Kay and Marino have with her mother, and the description of her body after it is exhumed.
- Marino wasn't in the story very much and when he was in it, he seemed like a different character. He was obsessive and jealous of Kay and Benton's growing relationship and showed a serious lack of judgement in starting a relationship with someone connected to his murder case.
- While it became obvious during the course of the novel that Gault was not going to be the killer this time, it would have been nice to get some resolution on his story. I didn't really understand his connection to Carrie and how he fitted into the 'espionage' plotline.
Rating: 4/5 stars. show less

I have to admit I couldn't really keep up with the murders or the suspects because I was far too engrossed in the myriad of relationships that Scarpetta was involved in with her niece, Benson and Marino which held my interest and curiosity. So,e of the technical stuff surrounding the murders also escaped my attention because at times the level of detail is too exacting.

Definitely the best in the Scarpetta series I've read yet, this was a mystery I was seriously struggling to put down.

Following on from the last novel, Scarpetta, Marino and Wesley are taken to a remote mountain area to investigate the death of a young girl. Tensions run high, and the reader really gets to know the 3 key characters like never before, and see their weaknesses exposed, and their relationships put to the test.

Compulsive reading with action-packed drama all the way through, no sooner had I finished this have I started on the next one. Bravo Cornwell!!!

Forensic pathologist Kay Scarpetta is part of an FBI team called in to assist in the investigation of the abduction and murder of an 11-year-old girl in Black Mountain, North Carolina. The circumstances of the murder suggest that wanted killer Temple Gault is behind it. A strange mark on the girl’s corpse prompts Dr. Scarpetta to consult Dr. Shade at the University of Tennessee’s “Body Farm”, where they conduct an experiment to help Dr. Scarpetta. Meanwhile, the lines between personal and professional blur as Kay draws closer to FBI profiler Benton Wesley and tries to navigate through the jealousy of her comrade, detective Pete Marino. Kay’s niece, Lucy, a Quantico intern, also gets into trouble and needs her aunt’s show more help.

Given this book’s title, I expected the Body Farm to play a larger role in the book than it did. Dr. Scarpetta spent very little time in Knoxville or with Dr. Shade. There were a couple of bloopers that continue to nag at me. First of all, the novel opens on October 16, and the child was last seen alive on October 1. She had already been buried and had a headstone by the time Scarpetta got to Black Mountain a day or two later. Anyone who has ever buried a loved one knows that you can’t get a headstone erected that quickly. Secondly, Dr. Scarpetta visited Knoxville on homecoming Saturday and stayed at the Hyatt. How did she manage to get a room there at the last minute? All of the local hotels would have been fully booked for months, especially a hotel that close to Neyland Stadium.

I think I would tire out on this series if I read the books too close together. It’s the type of book that makes good airplane reading, so I might revisit Dr. Scarpetta’s world on some future trip. show less

Fieldnotes:
Black Mountain, North Carolina, Contemporary (p. 1994)
1 Medical Examiner (and Lawyer) with Sweeping Investigatory Powers
1 FBI Profiler
1 Investigator Living his way to a Heart Attack

1 Dead Child w/ injuries that just don't add up
1 Strange Discoloration
1 Exhumation
1 Very Brief Mention of The Body Farm despite that being the title

2 Instances where Kay's immediate unexplained dislike of someone means they are A VILLAIN
1 Notorious Serial Killer on the Loose
1 Dead State Investigator / Suspect
1 Spooked "Hillbilly"


Not!Autoerotic Asphyxiation (or is it?)
1 Terrible Car Not!Accident
Munchhausen by proxy


Fiscal Impropriety
Jealousy
Adultery

1 Decoy Same-sex Relationship
1 Aborted Stint in Rehab
Severely Dated Techno-babble

The Short show more Version:
This was my first of the Kay Scarpetta novels, and probably not a good place to start. We were plunged into the middle of Kay's relationship muddle with both Marino and Wesley, and (certainly without backstory) none of them come out of the situation particularly likeable. In fact, the bulk of the book seemed to be working through the muddle with Marino and Wesley or alternatively the subplot with Scarpetta's niece Lucy (none of whom I have any affection for) and on the back burner attempting to tie this round of murders to a roaming serial killer (who again, I must assume was a Big Deal in previous books).

Cornwall makes much of Scarpetta's training being as both an ME and a lawyer, and talking about her investigative powers, but relatively little seems to be done to actually investigate young Emily Steiner's death as the gang is far too consumed with living out their soap operatic drama, and I found essentially all of the characters unnecessarily abrasive. There is a fair amount of technical babble & jargon (your research is showing...) that, certainly on the technical front, is now largely outdated. As are the story's attitudes towards same-sex relationships ...

I don't expect I'll be picking up any additional Scarpetta novels on this outing. show less

When a young girl is murdered in a similar way to Eddie Heath from the last book, Kay is worried that her failure to catch Temple Gault has cost another life. However, the investigation becomes more and more bizarre, leading detectives to believe this might be the work of a copy-cat, a local weirdo or someone else entirely. Complicating matters, Kay's niece, Lucy, is now working for the bureau in the computer department and it looks like she's been caught stealing classified information. Kay has to catch a killer and clear her niece's name, all while dealing with her burgeoning new romance (with someone completely unexpected) and the estrangement of another friend.
This is not your typical murder-of-the-week type book. The show more characterizations and relationships between the characters continue to grow deeper throughout the series. I'm not really a fan of Kay's new relationship, but it's realistic, and obviously character-directed, not a sop for the audience who expects a romantic subplot. I always really enjoy the technical details of forensic experiements, but the "Body Farm" of the title, an area where bodies are decomposing in contrived circumstances in order to better understand time of death, was a little nauseating to read about. Particularly because I was eating lunch at the time I happened to come upon that part of the book.
My biggest nitpick continues to be how this ME is always in a position to come into violent conflict with the villain at the end of the novel. It's unlikely to happen even once in the life of any other non-fictional ME and for it to keep happening to Kay is ridiculous. I know there needs to be a suspenseful, cathartic ending, but it's completely unrealistic. In such a series, where the author is very well informed about forensic devices and details, and the time lines are more realistic than other murder/detective novels (i.e. the crime is not solved in the space of a week, but rather months), it bothers me that this very critical point is so improbable.
Overall, though, a decent book, which kept me interested and desirous of more about Kay Scarpetta. show less

8/10
Dr. Kay Scarpetta’s personal life takes as much space in this book as the murder(s) she is helping to solve. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but I hope the complications don’t overshadow the investigations and forensic science in future books. Cornwell’s characters, law enforcement personnel as well as “villains”, are complex and flawed, making them interesting as well as exasperating.