SOURCE: Skenazy, Paul. “Mysteries.” Washington Post Book World 27, no. 29 (20 July 1997): 10.

In the following excerpt, Skenazy offers a negative assessment of Unnatural Exposure, faulting Cornwell for neglecting the scientific details that made her previous books so engaging.

After a detour earlier in the year in Hornet's Nest, Patricia Cornwell returns to Dr. Kay Scarpetta, Virginia's Medical Examiner, who provides more lurid details about corpses and their meaning than most of us imagined we'd ever care to know. Unnatural Exposure begins with an unsolved case of mutilated bodies, some in Ireland and some in Virginia, that seem the work of the same killer. A similar corpse found at a Virginia dump site, however, proves to be done by a different set of hands. Convinced of that, Scarpetta tries to develop a sense of this new killer, while one detective leaks information that undermines her efforts, and while the killer starts...