Spoilers!
Nothing like starting 36 years later and 28 books in, but better late than never to give a Patricia Cornwell’s most famous character a whirl (interestingly enough, a character I learned has now been adapted into a TV series featuring a great cast, including Nicole Kidman, Jamie Lee Curtis, and Simon Baker). I’m talking about Doctor Kay Scarpetta in the 2024 book, Identity Unknown. Cornwell is one of those authors you see proliferate on bookshelves everywhere, but I’d yet to crack one of her books open until now. What’s nice about the equivalent of a procedural TV show in book form is that you can haphazardly jump into the 28th book and still enjoy it as a standalone, even with 36 years of history behind it. Obviously, though, my preference would have been to read in chronological order, beginning with the first, 1990’s Postmortem. But because I jumped in at the 28th book, I have to go with my judgement of it as is, and I can’t say I came away with an enthusiastically favorable opinion! I give any book I read all the way through on Goodreads a five-star rating — which is why I wasn’t one of those people jumping for joy when they finally allowed half star ratings — with the reasoning being that I read it all the way through. It’s as simple as that for me when grading an author. They accomplished the mission. Identity Unknown was just rather flat for me, with the only notable action occurring with 10 pages left in the book, the stakes still rather low, and the antagonist not even the antagonist of the book. Otherwise, it was a rather steady whodunit that did intrigue me enough to keep reading, but certainly, I never for a moment thought like some of the secondary characters did that the answer was extraterrestrial in nature. Moreover, my judgment of the book might be affected by Cornwell writing it in first-person from Scarpetta’s point-of-view. First-person POV can be tough and engenders that aforementioned flatness, or detachment with everything occurring, oddly enough. Overall, it hasn’t completely shut me out on trying a Cornwell book again, as I’m sure she has stronger entries in her long-running Scarpetta series, or in her other works, but I’m not clamoring to do so either.
Scarpetta is a medical examiner for Richmond, Virginia (playing on Cornwell’s real-world experience), who is at this point probably in her 60s, although I don’t think her age is ever mentioned, with a family also in law enforcement. Her husband, Benton, is with the Secret Service, and her niece, Lucy, is with the FBI. Scarpetta and Benton both had previous marriages that fell apart after their affair with each other. Dorothy, Scarpetta’s sister and Lucy’s mom, is not in law enforcement; instead, she’s a social media influencer (who has won awards, mind you!). Dorothy is married to Marino, who has apparently always pined after Scarpetta, but in his words “settled” for Dorothy. He’s a former police detective and seems to be Scarpetta’s closest forensic assistant now. Prior to her affair with Benton, Scarpetta had a brief dalliance that then became a lifelong friendship with astrophysicist Sal Giordano, who has just recently won a Nobel Prize.
Then, Sal turns up dead in an abandoned park with a Wizard of Oz theme, no less, and it seems like he was dropped out of a UAV, or unknown arial vehicle, hence Marino and Dorothy, adamant alien truthers, taking their theorizing to outer space, while Scarpetta and Lucy almost immediately assume it must be their longtime nemesis, Carrie Grethen. Carrie is a former FBI agent, who seduced Lucy and turned out to be a violent sociopathic. Apparently, in a prior book and encounter, Scarpetta nearly killed Carrie when a drone chopped off her finger tips and scarred her face.
Meanwhile, the case Scarpetta was working on before all this occurred is the death of Luna Briley, a little girl to the rich parents of Ryder and Piper Briley, who own various properties, including the old theme park and the likely private airport the UAV came out of. The parents are claiming she managed to get Ryder’s gun and shoot herself, but it seems readily apparent that was not the case. The parents, using their money and power, are also threatening and harassing Scarpetta and her team. They even initiate a lawsuit against Scarpetta and scores of other officials ahead of any likely homicide ruling on Scarpetta’s part. Because of the connection to Briley companies, as well as later “fake lunar dust” found on both Luna’s (ironic) and Sal’s bodies, Scarpetta and the team think these cases are linked.
Because of Sal’s work with the federal government, including top secret projects, a slew of alphabet soup agencies are interested in his death and what that portends for U.S. national security. Understandable. Even understandable that Lucy and the FBI would take a starring role in the investigation. What I was confused about is why the Secret Service was involved at all, at least beyond the initial national security interest, but certainly not doing on-the-ground investigative work, as they do here, including through Benton.
A good example of what I’m talking about with the lack of notable action is that it takes more than 100 pages from knowing Sal is dead to Scarpetta getting to and examining his body. That said, that is when the book picked up and became more intriguing on the whodunit score. Or really, howdunit. The alphabet soup of agencies and their representatives begin interrogating Scarpetta, owing to her past relationship with Sal, while she is doing the autopsy. That was kind of odd! You’d think you would want her focused on the autopsy or her answers, but not both at the same time!
Ultimately, Carrie was involved, and did kill Sal with a helicopter that was painted in such a way as to avoid radar. Or lack of fingertips also explains the indecipherable markings they found on Sal’s truck. No aliens here. She also didn’t kill Luna, though. Piper did, and the parents are promptly arrested. Carrie flees to Poland, but then through an AI known as Janet that Lucy has, she attempts to taunt Scarpetta. Instead, Lucy set that up as a trap and they’re able to track down and arrest Carrie, too. So even the “big bad” that was talked about all book for how much of a looming and potent threat she was turned out to be a remote threat, quite literally.
The one mystery that remains is the fake lunar dust. Turns out, Sal was working on some sort of lunar radio telescope to be stationed on the moon at a secret nearby facility and he didn’t want the federal government stealing his idea. For some reason, when Scarpetta and Marino investigate this, Scarpetta’s former dirty security guard attacks them, nearly killing Marino until Scarpetta can kill him. That was the little blip of action we got at that end of the book.
I will say, the most interesting and lively character of the book — definitely more than Scarpetta herself — was Dorothy! She was fun, with her bougie ways and scoffing at the law enforcement trappings of everyone else. I’d be more interested in a book from Cornwell that features more of her.
So, yeah, like I said, I was intrigued by the whodunit and howdunit of it all, but there wasn’t enough leftover at the end to keep me wanting more in a good way. Maybe next time, Doc (to use Marino’s nickname for her).
