Yes, the novel is written in an entirely different style from the other Scarpetta novels. Instead of first-person interaction, we receive third-person. There are no insights or glimpses of the old Scarpetta here. Kay is now regulated to being a fired, tired, wrinkled-clothed woman living in a rental home in Florida, all aspects of exciting scenes of forensic detail absent.

Scarpetta is not even really the main focus of the book; we get lots of confusing stories revolving around past characters: Lucy, Marino, Benton, Jay Talley, Jean-Baptiste Chandonne, and many others. While the story starts out well enough and intriguing, with Chandonne sending letters from prison to those on the outside who helped put him there, it quickly loses its focus into a mess of plot that is hard to muddle through.

I optimistically gave the book three stars, because I was so happy to see a new Scarpetta novel, but I'm not so sure it was worth the wait. While it is not a complete waste of time, reading this chapter in Kay Scarpetta's life will probably not whet the appetite of the constant fan.

I normally enjoy Cornwell's novels as light relief on a plane, but this one was seriously disappointing. There's only one crime scene investigation, towards the end, of a largely irrelevant murder, and the rest of the book seems to be made up of the guilt and neuroses of the central characters as they all move away from the professional orbits that (once) made them so interesting. The Wolfman (yawn!) and his twin brother Jay are trotted out YET AGAIN as the bad boys of the piece, only to be despatched 'offscreen' at the end. I agree with other readers that the ending was sudden and flat - I convinced myself that I had missed a chapter and resorted to shaking the novel to see if the extra pages would suddenly materialise, explaining what went down at the shack and how Benton killed Jay and what happened to the Wolfman. No such luck. This didn't seem like a cliffhanger, more like a "I can't be bothered" from the author. I shall seriously debate buying any future Cornwell books - "Jack The Ripper" was a shoddy piece of scholarship, and this was lazily written throughout, lacking the taut plot and original characterisation that made the others in the series so enjoyable. A real shame.