Depraved Heart (Kay Scarpetta 23) Hardcover – 22 Oct. 2015

I have not enjoyed last three Patricia Cornwell books. She used to be one of my favourite thriller writers but she has definitely lost her way. Wish I'd read the reviews on this before I bought it. Last chance saloon, will not be buying any more of her books until I read she has significantly improved.I only read 52 pages and was bored out of my mind. Wordy, self indulgent twaddle. Enough of the Carrie/Lucy story lines. Lets get back to what she used to do well, fast paced murder investigations full of fascinating forensic detail. I find I don't like any of the characters anymore, all too morose.

Its not very often that I give up on a book but when I do, its usually when a popular author has just overdone a franchise. It happened for me with Kathy Reichs and Tempe Brennan, and its happened here with Cornwell and Scarpetta. This story really is one too many and, after being totally bored for several hours of reading, I gave up at the 30% mark.Please Patricia, accept that this character has run its course and find another. Or just retire and enjoy what I'm sure are very considerable rewards earned from Scarpetta over the years.

I've read, & often re-read, all of the Scarpetta Series & it's increasingly disappointing that with each progressive book any death worthy of Scarpetta's time & narrative is hard to find scattered in between pages & pages about herself, Lucy & Lucy's narcissistic yet mundane life (for a character kitted out as a novice femme 007), Benton - the lover come husband resurrected from death & not even discretely seems boring, & bored, merely covertly watching everyone in the family with distain or distaste, then Marino, the painfully inept rapist 'cop' who doesn't have a bone (excuse the pun) of respect, morality, empathy or even sympathy & rides on his bipolar & fading character somewhere on the periphery mainly ~ oh, and then an assortment of Lucy's psychotic lesbian throwaways, one or two dogs for a barely heard "ahh" or "aww" factor, far too many recurring Kay Scarpetta nemesis (are we even sure Scarpetta IS a Forensic Pathologist anymore?) who do nothing but make the heroine out to be fair game for target practice when she should be predominantly in the morgue & investigating victims of death (very much how it all started so well) instead of dodging death, being insufferably moralising, providing us with grocery lists, wine recommendations & recipes!Please can we just go back to the build-up of being a tad squeamish reading a great piece of fiction made more realistic with each paragraph & chapter of an account of recovering bodies (the remains of suspicious deaths), the questions raised as to who, when, why, how etc - all factors pondered during autopsy, the forensic scene, the suspects & so many of the forensic sciences that are not for the faint hearted yet fascinate a growing audience.Scarpetta should have remained the pathologist. Whenever she described the smell of death within the morgue, the putting on of the white lab coat we mostly all anticipated the grisly details & the culmination of what it all eventually led to. We knew Scarpetta was 'getting down to business'. For me this book really showed how irrelevant the dead are now & how preposterous it is to keep labouring over niece Lucy's illegal arsenal & high IQ, really?? It's hinted the dead woman was high on social ranking, that her Mother was going to bring the echelons of hell down on Scarpetta & Co - yet all that anticipated angst dissipated in favour of a torrential storm of the rain & wind variety! Huh? Irrelevant! Furious Mother of the deceased? Compulsive reading! Apparently not.Stop chasing ghosts of the likes of Walter Sickert being Jack the Ripper - that was compelling reading some years ago now by another writer & it gets boring when each theory is just repeated almost word for word by a writer further down the line.Personally I'm sorry to say I also have no use for a cookery book written by a fictional character! I don't like the egotistic boasts of pasta for breakfast, brunch, lunch & dinner but it's one of Scarpetta's facets & so tolerated but usually only skimmed through.Bring back the Kay Scarpetta that had us engrossed in past books. Please? I expect to hear about the permanent limp thanks to yet another assassination attempt but don't make it just another distraction that is diluting Scarpetta & her gritty investigations of bygone days. Put her back to work again or please just kill her off for good - maybe food poisoning. Or by Lucy with her penknife maybe.

The early books were intelligent and exciting. But the stories became increasingly unbelievable and outlandish.She spent several books establishing that Benton was dead, then he reappeared like Bobby Ewing in a shower. I stopped reading the books, then read one recently when it appeared that she had returned to form. So when this came up at 99p I bought it. What a mistake. A tedious book, where her niece Lucy ( always an unbelievable character) and her partner become involved in a double, triple cross with the FBI. This is a result of a supposedly dead character coming back from the dead (now where I have I read that storyline before?) At some point there is a murder, but it gets lost in the absurd plot. My best advice is Do not waste your time and money on this book.

I read all the Dr Scarpetta's series back to back (but I won't buy the last one, Chaos, not yet, at £9.24, what is going on here?). Honestly, I am getting dissatisfied as the series grows. I find myself skipping too many pages of tedious descriptions and technical definitions. Maybe the only thrill would be to kill the series now. Scarpetta is getting on my nerves. I used to like her until Port Mortuary but she is getting increasing too judgmental, too self absorbed and thinks she knows better and frankly, she has lost her sparkle. I don't like Benton either, nowadays he feels like a wet sock but a manipulative creep. My favourites were Lucy and Marino. But even Lucy has become extremely unlikeable. A total narcissist.Though there was one line in the book that redeemed Kay Scarpetta's series in my eyes. It is when she says she realised she forgot how Marino was one of the best investigators. Yes, he is. Marino surely has issues but Scarpetta never really confronted him and can only talk about them behind his back. Yet, I think Marino is a brilliant character. It is just a shame he has been reduced to a stereotype foul mouthed, aging and balding, bumbling and stupid, bully cop. Marino has hidden depths that could have been exploited.But this book was better than the last 3. At least, a bit of excitement from time to time. Though it seems to me it was again too far fetched. Maybe if I can get the next one from the Library, I will read it but I am not going to spend more money on this series. I wonder which crime/thriller writer will replace Patricia Cornwell. After all, I have been immersed in the stories for the last five months, I read nothing else...I feel sad but I have had it with Scarpetta.