Read between 29th June to 4th of July
Edition Details:
Format : Paperback
Page count : 404
Publisher: Warner Books
Series : Kay Scarpetta #1
Awards: Macavity Award for Best First Mystery Novel (1991), Anthony Award for Best First Novel (1991), Prix du Roman d’Adventure, The Crime Writers’ Association New Blood Dagger (1990), Edgar Award for Best First Novel (1991)
First Sentence:
It was raining in Richmond on Friday, June 6.
Young Women are being brutally murdered in Richmond,Virginia. There seems to be no pattern in the killing. The police just know that the murders usually take place on early Saturday mornings. The atmosphere of dread is building up and the officials are not liking it a bit.
When Dr Scarpetta,chief medical examiner, gets a call at 2:30 in the morning she knows that another woman has been murdered. The pressure is mounting on Dr Scarpetta to find some forensic evidence which will help the police in nabbing the perpetrator. She knows that until she finds something about the killer the bodies will keep piling.
But that’s not the only thing that’s she has to think about. Somebody in the office doesn’t a woman to be in this powerful position. And that somebody may want to destroy her career and reputation…
Postmortem is the first novel in the Kay Scarpetta series. Kay Scarpetta is chief medical examiner and for me it was a very weird choice for a main character of a thriller novel. It was because as a chief medical examiner one will never be directly in the line of action. Her role would usually come when the body has been found and will require her to hand over her reports to the police officers which in turn would then go after the culprit. I was skeptic when i started this book but had heard so much praise about it that i had to read it. And believe me it was a gripping read.
The writer has managed to keep the thrill quotient very high and story is taut that forces the reader to keep on reading. There were many times that i thought i knew who the killer was but every time i was wrong. Many side characters come under suspicion and this suspense remains till the author decides to reveal the culprit. This is the thing that i liked about the book that it keeps you guessing till the end.
As it’s the first book in the series the reader gets to know the various aspects of life of Kay Scarpetta . We get to know that she’s divorced and has been recently appointed to the post. We get to know the problems that she faces both in her private and professional life.This is necessary as it helps in connecting to her and one wants to know how her life will unfold. Patricia has done that successfully and i’ll surely read the series.
As a person i liked Dr Kay Scarpetta. She is loving as is seen by her relationship to her niece. But she sometimes appears as a person having less self esteem and mainly it happens when she’s talking to her mother. She is good at her job and knows the discrimination that she’ll have to face. We get to know that she has already faced it when she was studying and is capable of dealing with them. And she does manages her problem in the end. Dr Kay Scarpetta is an interesting character and it would be interesting to watch how her equation with different persons in her life changes as the time passes.
Another aspect of the book is that there is a lot of technical information in the book which can be off putting but i think is necessary as its part of the protagonist working environment. So, without it the character would lack the authenticity. There are few paragraphs devoted to relational database and as a programmer i had fun reading it. For me it was the first time i was reading about databases in a novel.Apart from that reading the book now in 2015 it may feel that most of the things that had baffled people in the book (as it was first published in the 90’s) will not do so but it also adds a fun quotient to the book to look how lives were before the technological advancements.
In the end i will just say that if you are looking for a good thriller than this is the book. Read it and you’ll not be disappointed.
You can get the book from the following link:
Amazon
