PostMortem by Patrica Cornwell

"The dead have never bothered me. It's the living that I fear."

Having read and heard about Kay Scarpetta, the heroine of Patricia Cornwell's medical examiner mystery series, I decided to read the first novel where this character is introduced. More of a suspense novel than a true who-dun-it, the story gets started at the middle - a serial killer has struck for the fourth time. Told from the point of view of the woman who is faced with performing the autopsies and delving into the way the murders were committed, we are given a unique insight to the crime.

Reading a series that started 20 years ago involves taking yourself back in time. In 1990, when the book was originally published, the computer was not a common household item, DNA testing was not a common medical procedure, and crime scene investigation was not a common topic on television. Some of the details are obviously dated, but the sign of a good storyteller is that those dated details are overlooked when you are interested in the story itself.

The details of the crimes, the characters who could be good or bad, the pace of the story, all draw you in and make you keep turning pages wanting to know exactly who is committing these horrific murders and why these victims were chosen. The finale is somewhat anticlimatic and seems to have been rushed to me.

I have only read this novel by Patricia Cornwell, so I hope the promise of her storytelling lives up to what I expect of the following novels. These characters are ones I hope to learn more about and I plan to revisit the medical examiner series that follows this debut.