Patricia Cornwell's fifth novel sends Scarpetta, Marino, and Wesley to a new setting, rural North Carolina near Asheville, a locale close to Montreal, where Cornwell grew up. Black Mountain (a real place) seems frozen in time: rural, quaint, friendly, seemingly immune from the wretched crimes Scarpetta has witnessed in the more urbanized center of Virginia. Yet the town is not immune; the unusual wounds on the body of a murdered eleven yearold girl recall those on the body of a Richmond youth whose killer, Temple Gault, eluded capture at the end of the previous novel Cruel and Unusual (1993). Thus the overmatched local police force, unprepared for such an outre crime, turns to the experts from Richmond for assistance. When another death occurs, due to what looks to be autoerotic death syndrome, the investigation overwhelms the local officials; they lack both the practical and emotional tools to...