BLACK NOTICE - PATRICIA CORNWELL (Black Notice - Patricia Cornwell)

Member Name: MissBez

Product:	Black Notice - Patricia Cornwell
Date:	10/08/09 (17 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Character-driven rather than plot-driven

Disadvantages: Far too much detail about autopsies - it's not a medical journal!

In Black Notice, Patricia Cornwell weaves a dark fairytale reminiscent of a Hans Christian Anderson story filled with grief-stricken people and animalistic acts of rage and desire.

The change of location two-thirds in (a device that Cornwell has used successfully in previous books) from Richmond, USA, to Paris, France, refreshes the reader just as the plot begins to stagnate (one-dead body-after-another). Thankfully this shift of scene forces Cornwell, and therefore Kay Scarpetta, away from routine and laboured autopsies to an exploration of international policing and, yes, some passion, as Scarpetta explores emotions that have been buried since the death of her partner. Cornwell has always been able to expertly convey tone in her novels and Black Notice is a good example of this. The fluid shadows along the banks of the Seine contrast to the clean lines and clinical backdrop of the Chief Medical Examiner's autopsy suite in North America.

Throughout the novel the desperate grief of both Scarpetta and her niece, Lucy, builds to a crescendo of destruction for one and physical abandon for the other. This is all juxtaposed with the growling frustration of the increasingly unlikeable Marino who has been demoted within the police force - all conveyed with precision, for by now Cornwell knows these people well.

Cornwell rightly avoids the cliché of Scarpetta's dead lover coming "back to life" after being in a witness protection program organised by the FBI, although interestingly the Marino character acts out the part of the reader/fan who desperately wants the twist in the tale to incorporate the return of Benton Wesley. Scarpetta's frustration at this suggestion from Marino may well be Cornwell's, as I suspect many letters were written to her by well meaning fans encouraging her to write this into the books. Who knows, maybe she has in later ones which I haven't read yet...

Summary: Great if you know the characters, but not the best introduction to the Scarpetta novels.