Unnatural Exposure by Patricia Cornwell
Patricia Cornwell is queen of the “this time it’s personal” mystery genre and Unnatural Exposure is one of its more egregious examples. Let me just say that if you know Kay Scarpetta personally your chances of being either dead or arrested by the end of the book are very high. Never has a plot been more tedious and unlikely.
My favorite part was when nobody did anything about a potential smallpox outbreak for days while the lead character was kept in isolation. I guess no one on earth but her could have tested those samples and/or cared enough to do it.
My second favorite part was when they were able to do a virtual reality walk through of a crime scene based on a photo that had been scanned in, emailed, saved to a diskette (just to show how big a file we’re talking about), printed, and scanned in again. Gack. Ending resolution? Maybe 150 dpi if you’re lucky. Walk through that.
My third favorite part was how the lesbians were treated like lepers who’d lose their jobs if they were discovered. I had to check the copyright date. Nope, not the dark ages. 1997. Who knew people were still so shallow and computers were still so dial up. OK, I knew the computer part.