Depraved Heart: The gripping no. 1 bestselling crime thriller series (The Scarpetta Series Book 23)

Yet another great read, and can't put it down book. Patricia Cornwell never fails to succeed with her brilliant mind

I love Kay Scarpetta books but lately there is a bit of an overload of technological explanations. They go on far too long. I would like the books to go back to the crisp no nonsense approach. Storyline is so complicated. It's a compelling story but not the easiest to comprehend as it strays this way and that.

This is book 23 in the Kay Scarpetta series by Patricia Cornwell. Patricia is one of my favourite authors, and I have read all of her books. She is a fantastic and clever writer. I love her characters Kay, Lucy, Benton and Marino, and I always enjoy reading about every case they are investigating.In this book, Scarpetta is investigating the death of a Hollywood mogul’s daughter, as well as trying to find out more about the disturbing video clips she has received about Lucy. As well as looking after her dead patients, she must protect her family too.Highly recommended!

I've read, & often re-read, all of the Scarpetta Series & it's increasingly disappointing that with each progressive book any death worthy of Scarpetta's time & narrative is hard to find scattered in between pages & pages about herself, Lucy & Lucy's narcissistic yet mundane life (for a character kitted out as a novice femme 007), Benton - the lover come husband resurrected from death & not even discretely seems boring, & bored, merely covertly watching everyone in the family with distain or distaste, then Marino, the painfully inept rapist 'cop' who doesn't have a bone (excuse the pun) of respect, morality, empathy or even sympathy & rides on his bipolar & fading character somewhere on the periphery mainly ~ oh, and then an assortment of Lucy's psychotic lesbian throwaways, one or two dogs for a barely heard "ahh" or "aww" factor, far too many recurring Kay Scarpetta nemesis (are we even sure Scarpetta IS a Forensic Pathologist anymore?) who do nothing but make the heroine out to be fair game for target practice when she should be predominantly in the morgue & investigating victims of death (very much how it all started so well) instead of dodging death, being insufferably moralising, providing us with grocery lists, wine recommendations & recipes!Please can we just go back to the build-up of being a tad squeamish reading a great piece of fiction made more realistic with each paragraph & chapter of an account of recovering bodies (the remains of suspicious deaths), the questions raised as to who, when, why, how etc - all factors pondered during autopsy, the forensic scene, the suspects & so many of the forensic sciences that are not for the faint hearted yet fascinate a growing audience.Scarpetta should have remained the pathologist. Whenever she described the smell of death within the morgue, the putting on of the white lab coat we mostly all anticipated the grisly details & the culmination of what it all eventually led to. We knew Scarpetta was 'getting down to business'. For me this book really showed how irrelevant the dead are now & how preposterous it is to keep labouring over niece Lucy's illegal arsenal & high IQ, really?? It's hinted the dead woman was high on social ranking, that her Mother was going to bring the echelons of hell down on Scarpetta & Co - yet all that anticipated angst dissipated in favour of a torrential storm of the rain & wind variety! Huh? Irrelevant! Furious Mother of the deceased? Compulsive reading! Apparently not.Stop chasing ghosts of the likes of Walter Sickert being Jack the Ripper - that was compelling reading some years ago now by another writer & it gets boring when each theory is just repeated almost word for word by a writer further down the line.Personally I'm sorry to say I also have no use for a cookery book written by a fictional character! I don't like the egotistic boasts of pasta for breakfast, brunch, lunch & dinner but it's one of Scarpetta's facets & so tolerated but usually only skimmed through.Bring back the Kay Scarpetta that had us engrossed in past books. Please? I expect to hear about the permanent limp thanks to yet another assassination attempt but don't make it just another distraction that is diluting Scarpetta & her gritty investigations of bygone days. Put her back to work again or please just kill her off for good - maybe food poisoning. Or by Lucy with her penknife maybe.

Patricia Cornwell came into my life when I managed a store in Guernsey and Jersey, in the Channel Islands. It was a franchise for a local company, an easy well-known brand. It was a seasonal brand, so Christmas, Easter, Mothers Day and Valentines Day were ferociously busy: at all other times we were quiet. I spent most of my time in the Guernsey store, reading. I always had a book underneath the counter. I read a lot of books before I was (quite rightly!) made redundant. That’s when Patricia Cornwell came into my life. That’s when I met my Aunt Kay. The title of the first novel sets the tone for the entire series, ‘PostMortem’ (1990). Cornwell deals in death, against a backdrop of murder most foul and life as coroner. Life as a coroner is hard and dangerous, it’s exciting. I often question why I devour grisly literature with glee but, not for too long. We all like and have a taste for, a bit of strange.After ‘Dust’ (2013) I stopped calling my Aunt Kay and abandoned Patricia Cornwell. ‘Depraved Heart’ (2015) changed all that. I found ‘Dust’ hard to hold but I wolfed ‘Depraved Heart,’ last weekend, like I had been literarily starved. I had missed my Aunt Kay dearly.As a general rule I hate endings. I hate finishing a good book. I hated it when the Ken Follet trilogy about a Cathedral in the fictional town of Kingsbridge ended. I felt abandoned and let down after reading the last G.R.R Martin ‘Game of Thrones’ novel. I feel suckerpunched when good things come to an end. Knowing that my Aunt Kay, Dr. Scarpetta, will be back is a good feeling. I look forward to the next installment and spending time with FBI Profiler Benton Wesley, Pete Marino and my favourite cousin, Lucy Farinelli.

The Scarpetta novels seem to be becoming very abstract, with a lot of introspection taking the place of action. Nevertheless, this was a fascinating read even though the main villain got away with I once again.

Definitely keeping me reading!! I love the ending! Well worth the read probably one of my faves! Characters as always are very real and relatable and you can actually imagine lot of it potentially happening …

I have to be honest, the first 20 pages were boring. I also got tired “listening” to the cop talk and eventually skipped over it. After that, it was a true Kay Scarpetta signature story. Leave it to Lucy and her life to make everything go crazy. Poor Kay. And the killer lady? Picked her out in the chapter without her even being there.

More of Patricia Cornwell’s crime mysteries! Loved it to the very end! She always leaves us wanting more!

For the first time I was disappointed with a book by Cornwell. I found it slow, almost dragging, with no much action going on and had to be patient to finish the book. Less entertaining than her earlier works.

Usual gripping story from Patricia Cornwell, I've been reading her books for years, but somehow this one was overlooked.It isn't always necessary to read her books in the order they were written. Thoroughly recommend her.

I liked Patricia Cornwell’s latest Kay Scarpetta thriller, Depraved Heart. It's not as good as her early books. I miss when Dr. Scarpetta performed autopsies. Too many secrets and half-truths in this book. However Lucy is the center of this book and is clear that Kay won't protect Lucy if she went against the law again. The “data fiction” phenomenon was very interesting. The most of the book happens inside Kay head. But eventually it was another good story to read till the end. And now waiting the next one.