Back in her post as Virginia's chief medical examiner, Dr. Kay Scarpetta finds things just as messy among the living as the dead. Even though her killer has cut off her hands, the corpse du jour is soon identified as that of Gwen Hainey, a biomedical engineer from Thor Laboratories, who just happened to live two doors down from Scarpetta's sister, Dorothy, and her husband, ex-cop shamus Pete Marino. Called out to assist U.S. Park Police investigator August Ryan, Scarpetta, urged on by Officer Blaise Fruge--whose mother, Dr. Greta Fruge, is a toxicologist Scarpetta came to trust before she left Virginia for Boston--connects Hainey's murder with the months-old death of Cammie Ramada, a jogger who was drowned only a short distance away. Dr. Elvin Reddy, Scarpetta's politically minded predecessor, short-circuited the earlier investigation by ruling the death an accident even though it was highly unusual for him to get involved directly at all. As she battles Reddy, largely through Maggie Cutbush, the British secretary he left behind to undermine his successor, Scarpetta has other worries as well. In a development that will remind fans of Cornwell's non-Scarpetta thriller Quantum (2019), she's called to the White House to conduct what turns out to be a long-distance autopsy by proxy on a pair of astronauts aboard a Thor orbiting laboratory who've apparently been killed by a barrage of space debris. And she's poisoned by a bottle of Bordeaux she was given by irreproachable Gabriella Honoré, the first female secretary general of Interpol. After the usual professional infighting, all these separate cases are wound up with a series of casual snaps that will leave you gasping, and not in a good way. Cornwell's piecemeal approach to her heroine's daunting job is more realistic than compelling. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Bestseller Cornwell's slow-moving 25th Kay Scarpetta novel (after 2016's Chaos) finds the forensic pathologist, recently appointed the chief medical examiner of Virginia, at her headquarters in Alexandria. She's preparing for the next meeting of the National Emergency Contingency Coalition (aka the Doomsday Commission), but her mind is on a woman whose body she examined over the weekend, a murder victim with severed hands dumped by railroad tracks on an island in the Potomac. Since the office has a history of corruption, and many employees remain loyal to Scarpetta's predecessor, she hires longtime confidant and former Richmond police officer Pete Marino to help identify the victim. They soon focus on a missing 33-year-old biotechnical engineer. Meanwhile, as a member of the Doomsday Commission, Scarpetta remotely investigates her first crime scene in space--a top secret laboratory where two scientists have died. Then a serial killer the media has dubbed the Railway Slayer strikes again. Though the complex plot touches on fascinating topics including industrial espionage and biomedical engineering, it builds to a simple and somewhat disappointing conclusion. Hopefully, Cornwell will return to form next time. Agent: Esther Newberg, ICM Partners. (Nov.)

In the first Kay Scarpetta novel since 2016's Chaos, and the twenty-fifth in the series, Scarpetta is back at her former job as chief medical examiner for the state of Virginia. She has a lot of cleaning up to do: the medical examiner's office is in a state of disarray, with a recent history of mismanagement and possible criminal activity. But all that's going to have to take a back seat to something more urgent: the discovery of a viciously murdered woman. And, as if that weren't enough, Scarpetta is also required to go to Washington, DC, and supervise, of all things, the investigation of a possible double homicide aboard a top-secret orbiting space station (she works remotely; i.e., no space trips). A few years ago, Cornwell might have stretched the reader's credibility with a space-based subplot, but now, thanks to billionaires cavorting in space (Can real-life murder be far behind?), she pulls it off nicely. In fact, she pulls off the whole book nicely. Scarpetta's return to her Virginia roots feels just right.