Autopsy

It's Scarpetta again! Chief medical examiner Dr. Kay Scarpetta is hunting a cunning killer who has mastered cutting-edge science for the most evil purposes in this thrilling twenty-fifth installment of the historic #1 bestselling thriller series.

Kay Scarpetta, a forensic pathologist, is the top medical examiner back in Virginia. After a long absence, she finds herself the new girl in town once more. She has an overbearing secretary and a history of corruption and neglect.

In a post-pandemic world riven by political and civic instability, she and her husband Benton Wesley—who is currently a forensic psychologist with the U.S. Secret Service—have moved to Old Town Alexandria, where she has her headquarters five miles from the Pentagon. When Scarpetta first starts working there, she is called to a scene near train tracks where a woman's body has been shockingly displayed, with her throat slit all the way down to her spine. The trail runs unsettlingly close to her own historic area.

Simultaneously, a disaster strikes a top-secret private space laboratory, leaving at least two of the scientists dead. Scarpetta, assigned to the highly classified Doomsday Commission, which focuses on delicate matters involving national security, is called to the White House Situation Room and given the duty of determining what transpired. However, an apparent serial killer strikes once more while she is working remotely at the first crime site in space. And Scarpetta might be in more danger than she has ever been this time.

Patricia Cornwell, the world's #1 bestselling mystery writer, once again demonstrates her talent for gripping readers with her trademark surprising turns, high-wire suspense, and forensic detail in this latest book in her ground-breaking Kay Scarpetta series.