Kay Scarpetta #17
Putnam
November 2009
On Sale: October 20, 2009
Featuring: Kay Scarpetta
512 pages ISBN: 0399156399 EAN: 9780399156397 Kindle: B002QX44DI Hardcover / e-Book $27.95 Add to Wish List
It is the week before Christmas. A tanking economy has
prompted Dr. Kay Scarpetta—despite her busy schedule and her
continuing work as the senior forensic analyst for CNN—to
offer her services pro bono to New York City's Office of the
Chief Medical Examiner. In no time at all, her increased
visibility seems to precipitate a string of unexpected and
unsettling events. She is asked live on the air about the
sensational case of Hannah Starr, who has vanished and is
presumed dead. Moments later during the same telecast she
receives a startling call—in from a former psychiatrist
patient of Benton Wesley's. When she returns after the show
to the apartment where she and Benton live, she finds an
ominous package—possibly a bomb—waiting for her at the front
desk. Soon the apparent threat on Scarpetta's life finds her
embroiled in a surreal plot that includes a famous actor
accused of an unthinkable sex crime and the disappearance of
a beautiful millionaires with whom Lucy seems to have shared
a secret past.
Scarpetta's CNN producer wants her to
launch a TV show called The Scarpetta Factor. Given
the bizarre events already in play, she fears that her
growing fame will generate the illusion that she has a
"special factor," a mythical ability to solve all her cases.
She wonders if she will end up like other TV personalities:
her own stereotype.
The Scarpetta Factor,
the seventeenth in the series, finds the familiar cast of
characters together again in New York. Marino is working for
the NYPD; Benton Wesley uses his forensic psychological
expertise at Kirby and Bellevue; and Lucy continues to
dazzle with her expertise in forensic computer
investigations as she works yet another case with NY
prosecutor Jaime Berger.