Four stars for Cornwell! The performance on the audio, however, was so annoying that I almost stopped listening. I have the print version, but am in a car for a long commute daily. I checked the book, and the annoyances were all in the performance, not the writing, so I tried to rate the writing separately. This was more disappointing because I fell in love with this series by listening to an audio version of The Bone Bed, with Kate Reading performing. Her voice is Kay Scarpetta to me, but there are earlier books performed by someone else and they were still good.

Anyway, this is the 23rd in the series, but the arc in this book reaches to the one before, certainly, and further back in the series. It could easily be read as a stand alone, but reading at least the previous book might be a good idea.