Postmortem by Patricia Cornwell

It’s the 90s. In Richmond Virginia people switch on their VCRs, turn over their cassettes, insert floppy discs into their PCs and listen to the dulcet tone of a modern dial up. All the while a serial killer, a ‘Mr Nobody’, is breaking into the homes of women late at night.

Now that the fourth victim has been discovered Dr Kay Scarpetta, the town's chief medical examiner, is running out of time…

I was lent Patricia Cornwell’s first book after completing The Axeman’s Jazz.

Post-Mortem, was published in 1990, and was a groundbreaker in its focus on forensic evidence within the crime-fiction genre. 

Nowadays whenever you are channel-hopping you cannot escape the slab-gore reruns of CSI: Crime Investigation, CSI: Miami or CSI: NY. 

The morgue table has become an obligatory feature in any crime thriller, and it is usually during that scene when I turn the telly on mute, leave the room to make a cup of tea or cover my eyes and repeatedly shout “Ewww!” until it ends.

Post-Mortem, evidently given its title, exposes the subject intently and talks about things that I don’t feel like typing about at the moment because I’m about to eat my dinner.

What’s more PG friendly is Cornwell’s mention of DNA samples, microscopic analysis of fabric fibres and dust which have moulded into the modern-day crime fiction vocabulary.

Plus the strong female lead, Dr Kay Scarpetta, who clashes with her male counterparts in her fight against violence to women, and probably goes out drinking with Agent Clarice Starling after work. 

Despite that the technology is a bit dated, and since I’m used to reading about the hacking exploits of Lisbeth Salander, I still enjoyed Post-Mortem.

It was a breezy read that I completed in a week and was the perfect companion to the January sniffles. 

No one can ignore the significance this book has had to the crime-fiction genre, and if you are wondering when the film based on Dr Kay Scarpetta is going to emerge it seems so is Patricia Cornwell… read here.