Patricia Cornwell (born 9 June 1956) is an American crime novelist best known for the Kay Scarpetta novels, which have been influential on the Forensic Drama genre. Born in Miami and raised in North Carolina, she is a descendant of Harriet Beecher Stowe and worked as a journalist before turning to crime fiction. To date, she has written over thirty novels, several of which have won awards. Her best-known example of non-fiction is her theory on the identity of Jack the Ripper.
No relation to Bernard Cornwell.
Books by Patricia Cornwell
The Kay Scarpetta novels
- Postmortem (1990)
- Body of Evidence (1991)
- All That Remains (1992)
- Cruel and Unusual (1993)
- The Body Farm (1994)
- From Potter's Field (1995)
- Cause of Death (1996)
- Unnatural Exposure (1997)
- Point of Origin (1998)
- Scarpetta's Winter Table (1998)
- Black Notice (1999)
- The Last Precinct (2000)
- Blow Fly (2003)
- Trace (2004)
- Predator (2005)
- Book of the Dead (2007)
- Scarpetta (2008)
- The Scarpetta Factor (2009)
- Port Mortuary (2010)
- Red Mist (2011)
- The Bone Bed (2012)
- Dust (2013)
- Flesh and Blood (2014)
- Depraved Heart (2015)
- Chaos (2016)
- Autopsy (2021)
The Andy Brazil / Judy Hammer series
- Hornet's Nest (1996)
- Southern Cross (1998)
- Isle of Dogs (2001)
Other novels
- At Risk (2006)
- The Front (2008)
- Quantum (2019)
- Spin (2020)
Children's books
- Life's Little Fable (1999)
Non-fiction
- A Time for Remembering: The Ruth Graham Bell Story (1983) note
- Food to Die For: Secrets from Kay Scarpetta's Kitchen (2002)
- Portrait of a Killer: Jack the Ripper — Case Closed (2002)
- Ripper: The Secret Life of Walter Sickert (2017)
Tropes
- Age-Gap Romance: At play in the Brazil/Hammer books, journalist-turned-cop Andy Brazil being much younger than police chief Judy Hammer.
- Comic-Book Time: Played with in the Scarpetta books. Kay Scarpetta remains in her forties throughout, while her niece Lucy goes from being 10 in Postmortem to 30 in Blow Fly which was published 13 years later.
- Book Dumb: Pete Marino in the Scarpetta books may be a very good homicide detective but he's not exactly well-read. On finding a copy of Paris Trout by Pete Dexter in a victim's house in Cruel and Unusual, he makes the assumption that it's about fishing in France note . Kay is not impressed.Unfortunately, he was serious.
- First-Person Perspective: Kay Scarpetta is the narrator in some but not all of her novels.
- Forensic Drama: The Scarpetta books, which have heavily influenced shows like CSI and its many imitators. Kay Scarpetta is the Chief Medical Examiner for the Commonwealth of Virginia, although in later novels she's a private forensic consultant.
- Insufferable Genius: Kay Scarpetta's niece Lucy can come across as this.
- Pen Name: A mild example — some early editions of her novels were published under the name "Patricia D. Cornwell" or "Patricia Daniels Cornwell". Daniels is her maiden name; Cornwell is the surname of her first husband but she continued to use that surname both personally and professionally after they divorced.
- Police Procedural: The Brazil/Hammer books are a straight example of this.
- Present Tense Narrative: Used in some but not all of the Scarpetta novels.
- Pun-Based Title: Portrait of a Killer, Cornwell's non-fiction book about Jack the Ripper, is this, given that the man she accuses of having been the Ripper, Walter Sickert
, was an artist note . - Serial Killer: Temple Gault, who appears in more than one Scarpetta novel, is one of these.
- Supreme Chef: Kay Scarpetta. Especially when it comes to Italian food. In later novels her home has a kitchen that was custom-built to her exact standards, and she always makes her own bread and pasta from scratch.
- Very Loosely Based on a True Story: Some of her novels are this. All That Remains, for example, draws heavily on the real-life Colonial Parkway murders, which took place in Virginia in the late 1980s; unlike in the novel, the actual murders remain unsolved.
