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TRACE
by Patricia Cornwell
Penguin, September 2004
Abridged audiobook pages
$19.95
ISBN: 0142800864


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

Five years after her less than amicable firing from the Medical Examiner's office in Richmond, Virginia, Kay Scarpetta puts off a vacation in Aspen with her boyfriend, Benton Wesley, and agrees to return and help find answers to the death of a teenage girl.

Kay brings along Pete Marino as her investigator but immediately she finds that the present medical examiner, Dr Joel Marcus, is doing his best to denigrate her abilities and get in the way of her doing her job. Kay can't understand it, if Marcus didn't want her input, then why did he call and request she come?

Meanwhile Benton Wesley, ex-FBI profiler, is in Aspen with his own case to solve. Kay's niece Lucy, now the head of a successful investigative firm, is trying to find out who tried to kill her employee, Henri, a young woman she's become involved with. Henri was beaten in Lucy's own bedroom.

Into this mix we meet the creepy Edgar Allan Pogue, a man who talks to only to himself -­ and to the ashes of his dead mom.

This book is better than the previous Scarpetta installment, BLOW FLY, but it's still not up to the height of the standard of earlier books in this series. Cornwell's insistence that Lucy is perfect for co-star status in this series is hurting the novels. When the author so insistently loves a character, thinking she is endowing her with wonderful qualities, while the readers can't raise any feelings for her except contempt, well, something is off.

As I listened to this audio version, abridged on 5 CDs, read by Carolyn McCormick, I didn't enjoy myself -­ and that surprised me. I love audio books and the Scarpetta series. I even have liked Carolyn McCormick's work on the popular Law and Order TV series.

Unfortunately I can't say that there's much that's positive about this production. The story seems to be too abridged; I'm going to have to read the printed version to see if all the loose ends that were left hanging were cleared up. The ending comes up very abruptly and it only seems to hearken the next book in the series -­ if there is one.

Ms McCormick had decided to give each character an extreme and distinct quality, but that only intrudes on the listener's concentration. The voices are cartoonish and over the top. The music used explodes into the narration, sounding like noise from outside the earphones, rather than music that supports the story.

Bottom line, I'd suggest that the readers stick to the printed version of TRACE. I'm hoping that the book fares better when it's read in the original form.

Reviewed by Sharon Katz, September 2004

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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)


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