Virginia's chief medical examiner Dr. Kay Scarpetta is getting ready for a romantic holiday with her retired-FBI-profiler boyfriend, Benton Wesley, when she receives a cryptic and foreboding letter: "Hey DOC, Tick Tock, Sawed bone and fire," it begins. Even more creepy, the taunting note has been signed by Carrie Grethen, the psychotic killer Kay helped send to a psychiatric facility for going on a murder spree with Temple Gault in Cornwell's earlier book Body Farm. Benton believes that Grethen--who also happens to be the former lover of Scarpetta's niece Lucy--has big plans for a comeback. And before Kay and Benton can leave for their trip and discuss it further, Scarpetta is called upon to don yet another professional hat, that of a "consulting forensic pathologist" for the federal government. Someone has burned a highfalutin horse ranch and all of its contents, including a human being, to the ground. Worse, Grethen has escaped and is on the loose and closer to Kay and her beloved than she knows. Point of Origin, the ninth Scarpetta thriller, is classic Cornwell: rich with detail and strong dialogue, and doused with harrowing twists.

Amazon.com Audio Book Review
When your everyday life is filled with death it's easy to find yourself a little edgy. The audio version of Patricia Cornwell's Point of Origin gives fans of her familiar heroine, Dr. Kay Scarpetta, a little something extra, a chance to hear the deep hurt and burning cynicism of the chief medical examiner's biting words. "You don't put your hands inside their ruined bodies and touch and measure their wounds.... You see clean case files and glossy photos and cold crime scenes. You spend more time with the killers than with those they ripped from life. And maybe you sleep better than I do, too. Maybe you still dream because you aren't afraid to."

Perhaps because Kate Reading has also narrated Cornwell's Unnatural Exposure and Cause of Death, her voice conveys experience and the history of what has come before, allowing listeners to hear between the lines. Using a subtle but effective range of vocal inflections, Reading lifts the characters off the page and carries them along as the plot spins ever faster, tangling Scarpetta in a snarl of arson, deceit, and psychopathic murder. With her arch nemesis making threats and suspicious fires leaving calcified corpses, Dr. Scarpetta's long-overdue romantic getaway has gone up in smoke. It's just one more day at the morgue, and Point of Origin, another hit in the popular series of Scarpetta mysteries, finds the good doctor's attitude honed razor sharp. (Running time: 11 hours, eight cassettes) --George Laney

From Publishers Weekly
Cornwell fans who relish her Kay Scarpetta stories for the postmortem findings will welcome this tale of twisted minds and the gory havoc they cause. Acronym fans will also be pleased. This tale opens with the complete destruction by fire of a Virginia horse farm, the owner of which was said to be in London. As consultant to the FBI and the ATF's NRT (that's the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms' National Response Team), Scarpetta joins the investigation on site and discovers some remains of a young woman in the master bath. Although the origin of the fire remains a mystery, research turns up two similar unsolved incidents from years earlier, female victims who were dead before the accompanying conflagration. Another fire disguising another murder, and the escape of Carrie Grethen, evil woman partner of Scarpetta's now dead archenemy Temple Gault, from a New York City hospital for the criminally insane, ups Scarpetta's anxiety level about both her beloved, brilliant niece, Lucy, who was seduced by Grethen in The Body Farm, and her lover, psychological profiler Benton Wesley. A third fire covers a third personally devastating death before Scarpetta is able to finger Grethen's new diabolical partner and survive a harrowing finale in a helicopter. Although Cornwell repeatedly tells us how anxious, strung out or devastated Scarpetta feels in the face of Grethen's evil threats, there's very little dramatization of these powerfully emotional conditions. The author is convincing mainly in the delivery of chilling forensic details. One million first printing; $750,000 ad/promo; Literary Guild, Doubleday Book Club and Mystery Guild main selections; simultaneous Putnam Berkley audio. Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
Cornwells ninth novel in the Kay Scarpetta series finds Scarpetta, Benton Wesley, Pete Marino, and Scarpettas niece, Lucy, investigating a series of arson cases also involving human victims. To further complicate the plot, Scarpettas old nemesis, Carrie Grethen, featured in Cruel and Unusual (Scribner, 1993; Avon, 1995. reprint) and From Potters Field (LJ 8/95), has escaped from a maximum-security psychiatric facility and is threatening Scarpetta and those close to her. Though this new work contains many of the characteristics of Cornwells best Scarpetta novelswell-drawn characters, nail-biting suspense, and shocking plot twistsScarpetta herself seems to be growing increasingly weary of it all, and the series seems to be losing momentum. It will be interesting to see where Cornwell takes it next. Still, readers who have enjoyed Cornwells other installments should like this one, too. Recommended for public libraries and popular reading collections.-Leslie Madden, Georgia Inst. of Technology Lib. & Information Ctr., AtlantaCopyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

The New York Times Book Review, Marilyn Stasio
The narrative devices ... dampen Scarpetta's spirit--and the reader's enjoyment. Whether by design or oversight, too much of the story refers back to the plot of an earlier book.

From AudioFile
In Cornwell's latest installment of Kay Scarpetta's exploits to catch an insidious killer, Joan Allen captures the Virginian voices; the more youthful tones of Scarpetta's niece, Lucy; and the law enforcement characters, but she adds little emotional color. For the most highly charged scenes, Allen stays cool. Her apparent distance from the characters makes some conversations hard to follow. The producers use dramatic music to make up for gaps left by the abridgment but end up calling attention to them. Nonetheless, Cornwell can deliver compelling listening. R.F.W. (c)AudioFile, Portland, Maine

FROM OUR EDITORS

The Barnes & Noble Review
Cornwell is back, and in a big way! Kay Scarpetta has never been so sharp and on top of things, and murder has never been more foul. Patricia Cornwell returns to familiar ground with another Kay Scarpetta novel, sure to delight fans of her previous novels as well as to draw in a whole slew of new readers. This is top-notch blockbuster fiction, wrapped up with strong character development and superb suspense. A treat for readers, Cornwell's fiction manages to combine the best of both the thriller and mystery genres, and here, with "Point of Origin" she rockets into the stratosphere with her best work yet.

Kay Scarpetta, to those unfamiliar with Cornwell's most complex and intriguing character, is the Chief Medical Examiner for the state of Virginia. Operating out of Richmond, Scarpetta receives an extremely threatening letter from a disturbed woman named Carrie Grethen. Readers familiar with Scarpetta's previous dealings in Cornwell novels will recognize Carrie from THE BODY FARM. Carrie Grethen is currently in a psychiatric hospital for the criminally insane. In her letter, she indicates that both Kay Scarpetta and possibly her niece Lucy are somehow bound up in one of Carrie's twisted schemes. To recap for Scarpetta newcomers, Lucy was Carrie's lover before Carrie's true psychopathic nature reared its ugly head. Kay ended up killing Carrie's partner-in-crime, Temple Gault, and not a night goes by that she doesn't relive that moment. Carrie may be incarcerated, but she has managed to touch Scarpetta's life in a creepy way, and Carrie's threatening letter only adds to herdistress,arriving right before Kay and her lover Benton Wesley are due to go off for their first vacation together in more than a year. Benton knows it spells trouble, but Kay ignores the implication of the letter.

Just before she's about to take off with Wesley to Hilton Head, Kay is called in on an emergency case. Up north, in Warrenton, Virginia, a horse farm has just burned to the ground. Racehorses worth millions died in the blaze, and the media mogul Kenneth Sparke also may have perished in the fire. But when Kay arrives, joined by Lucy, there is more at the scene of the crime than dead animals. Someone was burned, fully clothed, in the shower of the rich man's house. A young woman, glass seared into her flesh, is the only human corpse recovered.

But as the story progresses, other surprises are in store for Kay. Kenneth Sparke is alive and well, apparently having no knowledge of why anyone would destroy his ranch, although he suspects it was a racially motivated attack. After the arson investigation is under way, Kay hears the news that Carrie has escaped from the psychiatric hospital. Kay's first concern is for her lover. She reaches Wesley by phone on Hilton Head Island, worried that Carrie will try to hunt him down there because of his involvement in bringing her to justice. As the plot twists tighter and tighter, terrifying and shattering secrets are revealed, and Kay finds herself on the trail of a truly nightmarish psychopathic killer.

Patricia Cornwell is at the top of her form with POINT OF ORIGIN. The suspense is high wire, a taut, haunting story of family, love, and murder. No one does it better than Cornwell in the thrills department, and Kay Scarpetta proves, once again, to be the smartest, classiest woman in fiction. Patricia Cornwell has another hit on her hands.

—Douglas Clegg

FROM THE PUBLISHER

From the author of Unnatural Exposure and Cause of Death comes a new Kay Scarpetta novel that pits Virginia's chief medical examiner against an audacious and wily killer who uses fire to mask his crimes. And when Scarpetta learns that her old nemesis, Carrie Grethen, is somehow involved, the investigation gets personal and tragedy strikes closer to home.

FROM THE CRITICS

Library Journal

Cornwell is so hot that in this new outing she pits Chief Medical Examiner Kay Scarpetta against a murderer who uses fire to cover his tracks.

Library Journal

Cornwell is so hot that in this new outing she pits Chief Medical Examiner Kay Scarpetta against a murderer who uses fire to cover his tracks.

Kirkus Reviews

Does Kay Scarpetta ever have a nice day? No sooner has she been taken from the arms of her FBI lover Benton Wesley by a disquieting note from her niece Lucy's murderous ex-lover Carrie Grethen, locked up ever since The Body Farm (1994), than she gets called to the scene of a particularly horrific arson. Nineteen horses are dead at the farm of black publishing mogul Kenneth Sparkes, a longtime adversary of Scarpetta's, along with what looks like the body of Sparkes's onetime lover Claire Rawley. All indications are that the fire started in the commodious master bathroom, but since there's no sign of accelerant or fuel, Scarpetta's forced to fall back on her specialty, testimony from the corpse, which eventually leads her back in time to a series of equally inexplicable arson-murders. By now, Carrie Grethen has escaped and written to every newspaper on the East Coast that she was seduced by Lucy and framed by Scarpetta and Wesley; Scarpetta is at loggerheads with Teun McGovern, Lucy's new boss at Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms; and Scarpetta's irascible buddy Capt. Pete Marino is indulging himself in intimations of mortality that turn out to be only too well-timed. As in Scarpetta's recent cases (Unnatural Exposure, 1997, etc.), the final face-off between good and evil comes as something of an anticlimax after the trademark grueling forensics, showing once again that Cornwell's most compelling characters tend to be dead.