Whhhhy?! Why do I keep coming back to these books? Everyone is on the precipice of danger/death/ruination, nobody trusts anyone anymore, add formulated killer and a twist (in this case one that is decades old and exceptionally convoluted) and bam. You've got the formula for writing a Kay Scarpetta book. 10,000 monkeys in a room with laptops could bang out better criminal twists than this book. I swear - even the meals and dialogue is repeating book-to-book. And 400+ pages, most of it taken place off-site of the ONLY murder Kay shows up to investigate?! Really? I loved these novels when they first came out and they were about the crime and the twist and there was anticipation and excitement, and you could tell that Cornwell was passionate about the narrative as much as she was creating it for us to read. Now, it's like Cornwell is just too bored to be bothered. But like a dope, I keep coming back hoping that this will be the occasional book she hits out of the park. I'd be luckier winning the lottery these days. This gets 2.5 stars only because I'm giving them to ME, for reading the whole damn thing.