SOURCE: Smith, Dinitia. “Death and Its Details.” Washington Post Book World 24, no. 37 (11 September 1994): 8.

In the following mixed review, Smith praises Cornwell's use of scientific detail in The Body Farm, but criticizes the novel's lack of character development and grim tone.

Child abuse. Serial killers. Death by autoerotic asphyxiation. Structure Query language for computers. A crime scene covered entirely in Super Glue. The Body Farm, Patricia Cornwell's fifth novel featuring the brilliant, feminist Chief Medical Examiner of the Commonwealth of Virginia, Kay Scarpetta, has them all.

After getting off to a jump start with an opening scene startlingly reminiscent of Silence of the Lambs—Kay jogging through the mud at FBI headquarters in Quantico, Va.—The Body Farm sets a smooth and mostly satisfying course.

In Black Mountain, N.C., an 11-year-old, Emily Steiner, has been murdered, and it looks like the work of the dreadful serial killer, Temple...