Depraved Heart - Patricia Cornwell
Read any Scarpetta novels lately? Well, I have—but I haven’t bought one in years, and don’t intend to buy any in the future. In fact, I’m not even sure I want to read another one, because… well, because they just keep getting worse and worse. I did read the latest one, Depraved Heart, however; and I’m here to warn you not to bother.
“Why?” you might ask. Well, mainly because it was lousy. No, it was worse than lousy: it was an overblown and bloated complaint that, frankly, says a lot more about author Patricia Cornwell’s mindset than it does about her writing skills. While her two most recent volumes (Flesh and Blood and Dust at least featured some fairly interesting forensic investigations, the 23rd installment in the Scarpetta series devolves into nothing but a 466-page rant about the FBI. At the risk of getting distracted by the tabloid descriptions of Scarpetta’s messy personal life circa the mid-1990s, we have to ask, “What is your problem with the FBI, Patricia?”
But about that book:
In the midst of investigating the apparent accidental death of a wealthy Bostonian (her 17th-century house is less than two miles from the Scarpetta-Wesley abode), Scarpetta received a text message from niece Lucy Farinelli’s (unhackable, of course) ICE phone. The message was merely a link to a video – but what a video! It was filmed and narrated seventeen years ago by none other than Scarpetta’s nemesis, Carrie Grethen (thought dead but resurrected as a serial killer by Cornwell in Flesh and Blood). Frantic for Lucy’s wellbeing, Scarpetta and Marino decamped to the Farinelli compound, 50 acres near Concord. There, they found the property under subpoena siege by the FBI (and, perhaps, other TLAs) as a mysterious helicopter buzzed overhead and one of Lucy’s FBI rivals led the “investigation.
For almost 400 pages, Scarpetta and her posse (Marino, Lucy, Janet) bitched and moaned about how the FBI was out to get Lucy, no matter what. Scarpetta resolutely refused to tell anyone about the videos – there were three by the time she left the property to return to the scene she’d been investigating. Of course, given that there are wheels within wheels and Scarpetta has reason to be more paranoid than perhaps anyone else on the face of the earth (except maybe Lucy), we know she was being stalked by… the same person who had stalked her in the last two novels, even as the same government domestic investigation bureau attempted to frame Scarpetta and her family – same as in the last three novels. Oh, enough of that. |
In all of the four most recent novels in the Scarpetta series, including the three named already and another titled Red Mist, the FBI either as a unit or in the person of a rogue agent or six, has hounded the Scarpetta-Farinelli clan. They’ve hounded them so much that Cornwell devoted far more page time to the FBI investigations and such than she did to any crimes Scarpetta might investigate.
Had the constant carping about the FBI, combined with Scarpetta’s conspicuous paranoia, not taken up so much room in the past three novels, all of them would may well have been the length of short stories. They aren't, however, but they do seem to have a common thread running through them. It’s almost as if Cornwell took a page from the fantasy world and wrote her own version of a multi-book series, e.g., The Lord of the Rings; complete with fellowships and evil wizards and orcs and goblins. Yeah, that’s it: Carrie Grethen is Sauron and the FBI are orcs; Scarpetta and her family are the Fellowship of… well, of what we don’t know.
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Fantasy got old once it became formulaic (all those imitations of LoTR), with the obligatory little people, talismans, quests and wizardry. The Scarpetta series has gotten just as old, perhaps because Cornwell has become so obsessed with how doggone mean the FBI is in the past three books.
Speaking of the series, I have to say, “Give it a rest, Patti.” And as for me, after Depraved Heart I’m done with Scarpetta. Call me if you ever write another novel that’s crime fiction instead of an extended rant about how badly the FBI treated you once upon a time… |
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