Cornwell, Patricia Daniels

Medical examiner Dr. Kay Scarpetta tries to solve the mysterious killings of four young couples. Bones and fragments of clothing, and a jack of hearts are all that remain.

Judy Hammer, sent to Richmond, Virginia, to help clean up their police force, becomes involved, along with her deputy chief, in the most challenging case of her career.

Three individuals--forty-two-year-old Deputy Chief Virginia West, Police Chief Judy Hammer, and twenty-two-year-old journalist Andy Brazil--search for a serial killer, exploring the seedy underbelly of Charlotte, North Carolina, while trudging through their own personal struggles, from unhappy marriages to obsessions with their jobs.

When the governor of Virginia orders that speed traps be painted on all streets and highways, the island of Tangier responds by declaring war on its own state, and it is up to Judy Hammer, the new superintendent of the Virginia State Police, and state trooper Andy Brazil to restore peace to the island.

Kay Scarpetta--now a senior forensic analyst for CNN--becomes embroiled in a surreal plot that includes a famous actor accused of an unthinkable sex crime and the disappearance of a beautiful millionairess with whom her niece Lucy seems to have shared a secret past.

As the chief of the Cambridge Forensic Center, Kay Scarpetta is confronted with a case that could shut down her new facility and ruin her personal and professional life.

Dr. Kay Scarpetta becomes both investigator and victim when she is contacted over the Internet by a murderer who is threatening to loose a deadly virus on the world.

Kay Scarpetta, working as a private forensic consultant in Florida, is thrown into a turmoil when Jean-Baptiste Chandonne, a serial killer she was responsible for bringing to justice, requests that she administer his death sentence in exchange for information about his crimes, as well as a new rash of killings in the area.