After a five-year hiatus, Cornwell (Chaos) returns with the 25th Kay Scarpetta thriller. With a sophisticated narrative, an outstanding company of characters, a horrific crime, and a surprising ending she proves you can go home again. When Dr. Kay Scarpetta and her Secret Service husband Benton are appointed to the president's Doomsday Commission, she also chooses to return to her previous position as chief medical examiner of Virginia. But she is soon second-guessing that decision while investigating the gruesome murder of a female biomedical engineer. Her predecessor's incompetence keeps handicapping her work; adding to her troubles, she and Benton are summoned urgently to a White House Doomsday meeting about a disastrous space incident that is somehow connected to the murdered engineer. VERDICT Scarpetta is brilliant, compassionate and humble, excelling in her profession and in diplomacy while trying to solve a heinous crime during a pandemic, dealing with combative coworkers, on call for the president and navigating a post—January 6 militarized DC. Longtime fans will cheer Scarpetta's return in this timely tale; although all events are novel-specific, the series is best read in order.

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.)