As Dr. Kay Scarpetta, the Chief Medical Examiner of the Commonwealth of Virginia, describes a meal at her home with one of her crime-fighting colleagues, she states, "we talked about fibers embedded in bone and Koss's analysis of them as we carried steaks and wine inside.

We sat at the kitchen table with a candle lit, digesting information few people would serve with food." The contrasts in this passage are the hallmarks of Patricia Cornwall's series about Scarpetta: the everyday versus the outre, small pleasures versus large terrors, professional objectivity versus emotional turmoil. Scarpetta and the recurring cast of the novels examine mutilated corpses and sundry other horrors as their day-to-day jobs. Going to their offices means confronting human carnage and cruelty. They must maintain their outward composure and adjust as though these crimes are everyday occurrences (which for Scarpetta, they are).

They must not let the horrors...