Product Description
From the New York Times #1 bestselling author of Unnatural Exposure and Cause of Death comes a white-hot new Kay Scarpetta novel that pits Virginia’s Chief Medical Examiner against an audacious and wily killer who uses f… More >>
Point of Origin
Written by admin on August 28th, 2010 in Mystery & Thrillers.
Tags: Origin, Point
I’ve read all of Cornwell’s books up to this one, and I found this sad, sad, sad — as well as wonderfully done. As usual, Cornwell’s characters are so real the reader feels like we know them personally. In Point of Origin, Cornwell gives the morbidly curious her usual dose of the gross but very real aspect of death. Most people don’t think of the cutting open of bodies as part of murder investigations, but as a writer and reporter, I have come across medical investigators and crime myself. I have grown so fond of her character, Dr. Kay Scarpetta, that I can see her with my own eyes. (In fact, I picture her as looking exactly like Cornwell, from her descriptions of Scarpetta and Cornwell’s own photographs and Cornwell’s experience). Scarpetta and myself savored the last moments of a dying relationship through this book. Cornwell never gives you an ending you’d expect. In fact, this one shocked me, and I’m pretty unshockable. Putting emotion aside, it was the best possible ending she could have done. I think Scarpetta would agree, although in an ironic, unhappy sense. The book serves up horrendous death and a lesson readers can take with them in their own lives — not to take anything for granted. Bravo, Cornwell!
Rating: 5 / 5
There is a guideline among play/screenwriters that says if a gun is on the table in the first act, it must be fired by act three. So when the villain’s threatening letter appears on the first page of the book, a reader can reasonably expect a person-to-person confrontation by the end of the book. Don’t hold your breath, it never happens. The ending clearly points to a continuation of Carrie the Villain in another Kay Scarpetta book, but disappointed fans may not pick up the next installment.
Kay Scarpetta fans will have to be devoted and loyal to love this book. The quality if a far cry from the tensely plotted, intriguingly detailed books that Cornwell wrote at the beginning of the series. The result is a main character who has shed all her flaws, leaving an unsympathetic, driven, workaholic superhero in her place.
Kay’s niece, in this plot installment, is fast following the character of her aunt. In other books this young woman was brittle, smart, sympathetic, and on the brink of self-understanding. Now she is just another lesbian computer genius, athlete, and expert helicopter pilot who comes complete with incredible intuition and brilliant firefighting skills and who regularly falls in love with her supervisors. Oh, and she was the villain’s former lover, too. But it wasn’t her fault. She was young. And dumb. Her character just doesn’t add up.
Readers can’t sympathize with someone they don’t understand, let alone identify with. A good book editor would have made sure to create a character transition for those who have not read every Kay Scarpetta book in order.
And that’s the major problem with the book–it’s not badly written, it has a lot of potential to be another stay-up-all-night-and-read-Cornwell book, but it is badly damaged by sloppy work that could have been easily fixed by a shrewd book editor. An editor would have also made sure the escaped colt that received a big buildup was explained instead of forgotten; that Mr. Sparks either had a name change or at least a more finished role in the second half of the book; that people vital to the plot line would have been introduced before the plot line is exhausted; that the dialogue flows less awkwardly; that the non-word “ironical” never appeared at all; and that the ending explained better why no chemical ingniter was found in the tests when it suddenly becomes an important factor in the book.
Let’s hope plot details get fixed by the next installment, or it won’t be a mystery that Kay Scarpetta fans begin to vanish.
Rating: 2 / 5
Cornwell’s early novels were very entertaining. They also showed a great deal of insight in how an ME operates (no pun intended). However, she seems to be in a rut. First of all, someone has to follow Kay Scarpatta around and keep her from dating. Her boyfriends all seem to die violently. Can’t Cornwell write a break up scene or a decent Dear John letter? And what is her fascination with niece Lucy’s past, present, and future lovelife? It isn’t titalating or even interesting. (Of course neither were Cornwell’s own alleged misadventures walking down that particular street.) Most of all, the ending is downright stupid. To invest five to six hours reading a book only to have everything resolved by a plot connivance (and not for the first time I might add) because an author can’t come up with anything better, cheats the reader. Maybe we should all demand our money back. Maybe Cornwell should do us all a favor in her next book by letting the boyfriend live and having Scarpatta get killed off.
Rating: 1 / 5
As a Professor of English literature at Victoria University, I recommended my students read this book as an example of a standard potboiler bereft of real ideas and characterisation. The style is basic, the grammar poor and vocabulary range limited. The main variety comes in trying to spot all the references to brand names. The plot meanders along introducing pointless elements like Marino’s christmas lights and the escaped foal which goes unexplained. The characters are surprisingly unappealing as Scarpetta rants most of the time and, as other readers have commented, Lucy is a bizarre character and I suspect the alter ego of the author. In spite of those comments, POO does succeed in being a page-turner, and that is all it needs to be, and it is a very easy read. But any enjoyment is entirely negated at the end when the denouement is tied up in about 15 lines and leaves it open for an obvious sequel. Given that very little of the point of origin was in fact explained, having the book tied in such a mediocre fashion was disappointing. Nevertheless, it keeps her fans and her bank manager happy.
Rating: 1 / 5
I have always looked upon Patricia Cornwell’s novels as a release. They are never intellectually demanding but, generally, are guaranteed to provide an interesting plot, good characterization etc.
While there was nothing wrong with “Point of Origin”, there was nothing in it to rave about either. Once again, the protagonist, medical examiner Kay Scarpetta, is faced with a baffling series of murders but, once again (and I am giving absolutely nothing away by saying this) she faces the same nemesis that we have seen in previous novels. In reading the novel, I could not help that Cornwell has become too comfortable with Carrie Grethen to be willing to branch out and create a new villain who resorts to methods other than those made so familiar by Dr. Hannibal Lecter in “The Silence of the Lambs.”
Where Cornwell succeeds, however, is in her mastery of medical detail. The success of the Scarpetta novels hinged greatly on the fact that the reader was actually able to picture themselves at the crime scene and in the morgue as a criminal investigation was conducted. The descriptions that Cornwell makes are admittedly gory but no more so than what medical examiners are, presumably, faced with every day. One is not left with the impression that the gore is gratuitous and that is why I have kept coming back to the Scarpetta novels.
“Point of Origin” is an improvement over some of Cornwell’s other more recent Scarpetta novels. If only she were willing to experiment with new characters and plot lines, rather than stick to what is becoming the same formulaic plot, her readership would only continue to grow.
Rating: 3 / 5