Land of Oz

Dr. Kay Scarpetta

This is a character in a series of books written by Patricia Cornwell. I'm going through the entire series now. Dr. Scarpetta is a medical examiner for Virginia, so this is something that CSI could have been based on. The stories are about murders - usually gruesome - and who is doing them.

I can't say I really enjoy reading these things, but they do grow on you. I've been steadily working my way through the entire series, so there's something there that grabs. The problem is that there's a whole lot that is pretty strange. The doc comes across as one with the physical and mental skills of a god and the emotional skills of a five-year old. For example, in the last books she learned how to fly a helicopter, not only in a couple of hours of flight, but well enough to take over the controls later while the bad guys in their own helicopter were dogfighting her's.

She's designed her own home, shoots like Matt Dillon, and cooks like the French Chef. She's kinda like a uber-Martha Stewart with a law and medical degree. I'm lousy at relationships, but she's worse. These two things just don't add up. Oh, and everyone is after HER. It seems like every super-criminal in the book decides to come after her, which is probably the main thing that annoys me - why after her?

And she has a niece who's probably more intelligent and more stupid than she is. Thier antics make horror movie cliches seem unique. There's an empty tunnel the bad guy is in and all the cops are across the city - guess who goes in the tunnel? It's dark and there's prowlers outside - guess where she's going?

I know there's supposed to be conflict in characters, but this goes to the extreme. It makes it hard to accept that a character can be so super-perfect and super-stupid at the same time. You can accept that to a certain extent, but not to the extremes these books go to. I can't really recommend this series, but then again, I am reading the stupid books which says something about my stupidity.