SOURCE: Berch, Bettina. “Cruel and Unusual.” Belles Lettres 9, no. 1 (fall 1993): 37.

In the following review, Berch compares Cruel and Unusual to Thomas Harris's Silence of the Lambs.

Do not start this book when you are expecting house-guests for the weekend or the night before tax returns are due. Save it for your first week of giving up cigarettes or that day when every single thing in the house is broken. Save Cruel and Unusual for when you just want to be left alone in your room with a good book.

Vaguely reminiscent of The Silence of the Lambs, Cruel and Unusual is the story of Dr. Kay Scarpetta, a Richmond (Virginia) Chief medical examiner, and the serial killer she is trying to stop. Scarpetta is not simply a female version of the hard-boiled private eye of yore—neither is she the “feminist” soft-boiled type. She does not come across...