Tuesday 28 February, 2006

Predator by Patricia Cornwell

I'm considering dropping Patricia Cornwell out of my "buy hardback" authors list. While Predator is a masterpiece compared to Blow Fly, she hasn't written a great book in years. I tend to read Amazon.com reviews before writing my own, to see just out of curiosity if other people generally pick out the things I like or dislike - for this book they have given two stars (based on 277 reviews) out of five. I wouldn't go quite that low myself - I still found the book ok, easy to read and at times even enjoyable.

But seriously, it's like Cornwell has done her best to make her characters as unlikeable as possible - and this includes Scarpetta, Lucy and Marino, the main characters in most of her books. Scarpetta is pissing people off again and is completely oblivious to it, Lucy is just being pissy and self-destructive (more than usual) and Marino, well, he's portrayed as an impotent ego-maniacal biker who has an obsession for Scarpetta and patience or courtesy for no-one. Personally I want to like the main characters in the book, or at least admire them in their evilness... this doesn't do either. And what pissed me most was that one of the central plots was based on the fact that Lucy, the wizz kid genius, doesn't change her admin passwords regularly. Jeez.

The plot is clever though. The reader know/guesses of course pretty early on that all the cases that seem unconnected really must be connected somehow, but how and by whom is very cleverly done and I had no clue. In fact the best thing about the book, easily, is the plot and especially the conclusion. And more Benton, please, I actually like him.

Posted by kolibri at 28 February 10:12, 2006
Comments
# 1 - Outi (on March 1, 2006 04:25 PM):

Haven't read this one yet, but I have to agree: Cornwell's books have gone downhill for quite some time now. I think it started when - instead of concentrating on Scarpetta like before - started bringing the other characters forward too much. When Scarpetta was still the only main character, the books were more interesting, more whole... Now it's as if they're not Scarpetta books anymore, but Scarpetta & Lucy & Marino & Benton -books. I know those other three characters were always present in the stories, but now they're getting too much space in the books for my taste.


# 2 - kolibri [TypeKey Profile Page] (on March 1, 2006 04:57 PM):

My advice is - don't run out to buy this one... Andd you have a good point too... But my main problem is that it's almost like Cornwell has started to hate her characters - honestly, if you don't want to write about them anymore move on and do/write something else.


# 3 - Dragon (on March 1, 2006 06:17 PM):

May I suggest that you switch from Patricia Cornwell to Bernard Cornwell -his latest series on Alfred the Great is tremendous.


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