Point of View

Body of Evidence by Patricia Cornwell is narrated by Dr. Kay Scarpetta, Chief Medical Examiner of Virginia, in the first-person past tense. Long passages of dialog are also, of course, primarily in the first person. Kay is trained as a physician, lawyer, and pathologist, and has risen to the upper levels of her profession. She writes with professional acumen and a heavy larding of sympathy for the unfortunate characters who come across her stainless steel table in the morgue. She is in a sense their advocate and is sorry that her knowledge cannot bring them back to life. Kay is always somehow the grieving child of a father who dies too young.

Kay accepts criticism that she gets too involved in cases and that she is a workaholic. In this novel, there is little she can do to avoid involvement, as the initial homicide victim, Beryl...