SOURCE: Champlin, Charles. “Bloody Sunday.” Los Angeles Times Book Review (11 February 1990): 5.

In the following positive excerpt, Champlin discusses Cornwell's attention to scientific detail in Postmortem.

Patricia Daniels Cornwell was a crime reporter on the Charlotte Observer who then became a computer analyst in the chief medical examiner's office in Virginia. Her only previous book was a biography of Mrs. Billy Graham. For her first mystery, Postmortem, she has created a protagonist, Dr. Kay Scarpetta, who is, conveniently enough, Virginia's chief medical examiner.

The police are confronting a serial rapist, following a forensic trial in which the computer is massively involved. Cornwell trots out her expertise in dazzling and occasionally bewildering fashion. But the specifics are fascinating, as work well-described always is, whether it's Dick Francis at the track or Amanda Cross on campus.

Dr. Scarpetta has a terrible time with the chauvinists around her, one of whom in...