Publisher details

Author: Patricia Cornwell
Publisher: Hachette
Genres: Crime Fiction, Thriller
Released: 01 January, 1993

Cruel and Unusual

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Synopsis

The fingerprints say the murderer is the man who's just been executed ...At 11.05 one December evening in Richmond, Virginia, convicted murderer Ronnie Joe Waddell is pronounced dead in the electric chair. At the morgue Dr Kay Scarpetta waits for Waddell's body. Preparing to perform a post-mortem before the subject is dead is a strange feeling, but Scarpetta has been here before.And Waddell's death is not the only newsworthy event on this freezing night: the grotesquely wounded body of a young boy is found propped against a rubbish skip.To Scarpetta the two cases seem unrelated, until she recalls that the body of Waddell's victim had been arranged in a strikingly similar position ..."A knockout." People"Ingenious...a first-rate storyteller." Los Angeles Times Book Review"Engrossing...an extremely effective novel of suspense, in all its varieties...Corwell's sleuth is the best in the business." Entertainment Weekly"Classic Cornwell...chilling...riveting...utterly convincing." Richmond Times-Dispatch

About the author

Patricia Cornwell

Patricia Cornwell's first crime novel, Postmortem, was published in 1990 and became the first novel to win all the major crime awards in a single year. In 2011 she was awarded the Medal of Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters.Often interviewed on US national television as a forensic consultant, Cornwell is a founder of the Virginia Institute of Forensic Science and Medicine; a founding member of the National Forensic Academy; a member of the Advisory Board for the Forensic Sciences Training Program at the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, NYC and a member of the Harvard-affiliated McLean Hospital's National Council, where she is an advocate for psychiatric research.Fox have acquired the film rights to the Scarpetta novels, featuring Angelina Jolie as Dr Kay Scarpetta. Cornwell's books are translated into thirty-six languages across more than fifty countries, and she is regarded as one of the major international bestselling authors.