CRUEL AND UNUSUAL

On the eve of longtime Death Row inmate Ronnie Joe Waddell's execution, Virginia chief medical examiner Dr. Kay Scarpetta (All That Remains, Body of Evidence, etc.) gets a call about the kidnap-murder of young Eddie Heath—a homicide that has uncanny similarities to Waddell's handiwork. And the eeriness continues after the execution- -when Waddell's fingerprint is found in the home of a second murder victim, and when Susan Story, Kay's morgue supervisor, spooked by the autopsy on Waddell, is killed with the same gun that shot Eddie. Kay has to deal not only with the specter of Waddell again at large (escaped? switched with another inmate? misidentified through his prints for someone else?) but with a security leak in her own office, as a breach in her computer files and the theft of her records put her on the spot as a suspect in Susan's murder—and point to corruption that reaches further than Kay can imagine. Cornwell's accustomed forensic flair, plus the bonus of an unusually baffling and intricate plot, make this her best book yet— and a new high point in her meteoric rise. (Literary Guild Dual Selection for August)