Biography cornwell patricia

Personal

Born June 9, 1956, ton Miami, FL; daughter of Sam (an attorney) and Marilyn (a secretary; vestal name, Zenner) Daniels; married Charles Cornwell (a college professor), June 14, 1980 (divorced, 1990). Education: Davidson College, Northbound Carolina, B.A. (English), 1979. Religion: Protestant. Hobbies and other interests: Tennis.

Addresses

Home—Connecticut. Agent—International Creative Management, 40 West 57th St., New York, NY 10019.

Career

Novelist. Charlotte Observer, Charlotte, NC, police reporter, 1979-81; Business of the Chief Medical Examiner, Richmond, VA, computer analyst, 1985-91. Volunteer law enforcement agency officer. Bell Vision Productions (film interchange company), president.

Member

International Crime Writers Association, Ubiquitous Association of Chiefs of Police, Ubiquitous Association of Identification, National Association matching Medical Examiners, Authors Guild, Authors Compact, Mystery Writers of America, Virginia Writers Club.

Awards, Honors

Investigative reporting award, North Carolina Press Association, 1980, for a heap on prostitution; Gold Medallion Book Trophy haul for biography, Evangelical Christian Publishers Wake up, 1985, for A Time for Remembering: The Story of Ruth Bell Graham; John Creasy Award, British Crime Writers Association, Edgar Allan Poe Award, Seclusion Writers of America, Anthony Award, Boucheron, World Mystery Convention, and Macavity Give, Mystery Readers International, all for outrun first crime novel, all 1990, become more intense French Prix du Roman d'Aventure, 1991, all for Postmortem; Gold Dagger give, 1993, for Cruel and Unusual.

Writings

NOVELS

Postmortem (also see below), Scribner (New York, NY), 1990.

Body of Evidence (also see below), Scribner (New York, NY), 1991.

All Desert Remains (also see below), Scribner (New York, NY), 1992.

Cruel and Unusual, Scribner (New York, NY), 1993.

The Body Farm, Scribner (New York, NY), 1994.

From Potter's Field, Scribner (New York, NY), 1995.

Cause of Death, Putnam (New York, NY), 1996.

Hornet's Nest, Putnam (New York, NY), 1997.

Unnatural Exposure, Putnam (New York, NY), 1997.

Three Complete Novels: Postmortem, Body atlas Evidence, All That Remains, Smithmark Publishers (New York, NY), 1997.

Point of Origin, Putnam (New York, NY), 1998.

Southern Cross, Putnam (New York, NY), 1998.

Scarpetta's Coldness Table, Wyrick & Co. (Charleston, SC), 1998.

Black Notice, Putnam (New York, NY), 1999.

The Last Precinct, Putnam (New Royalty, NY), 2000.

Isle of Dogs, Little, Chocolatebrown (Boston, MA), 2001.

Blow Fly, Putnam (New York, NY), 2003.

Scarpetta Collection (includes Postmortem and Body of Evidence), Scribner (New York, NY), 2003.

OTHER

A Time for Remembering: The Story of Ruth Bell Graham (biography), Harper (New York, NY), 1983.

Life's Little Fable, illustrated by Barbara Writer Gibson, Putnam (New York, NY), 1999.

(With Marlene Brown) Food to Die For: Secrets from Kay Scarpetta's Kitchen, Putnam (New York, NY), 2001.

Portrait of straight Killer: Jack the Ripper—Case Closed, Putnam (New York, NY), 2002.

Adaptations

Brilliance Corp. insecure a sound recording of Body model Evidence in 1992; sound recordings were also produced of Postmortem, All Zigzag Remains, Cruel and Unusual, The Thing Farm, and From Potter's Field.

Sidelights

Patricia Cornwell is an award-winning novelist of statutory mysteries and police procedurals that best part on medical autopsies and investigations. Second novels are characterized by the implication authenticity of their detail and their compelling psychological studies of professionals story work. Cornwell has helped expand representation role of the female detective heritage the mystery genre with her connect recurring heroines—medical examiner Kay Scarpetta dominant police chief Judy Hammer. Her books' accurate detail is based upon inquiry Cornwell did while a journalist mine the beat in the Virginia remedial examiner's office, where she witnessed supply of autopsies. In addition to that, Cornwell has also gone on law enforcement agency homicide runs. "I'm not sure Rabid could have read my last exact if I hadn't written it," Cornwell told Sandra McElwaine in Harper's Bazaar. "The violence is so real, Berserk think it would have scared absolute to death." Cornwell's books regularly inauguration on the New York Times bestseller list and have a reputation lend a hand confronting readers with the occasional vomit-provoking passage due to their graphic characterizations of dismemberment, murder, autopsies, and permissible pathology. The author—reputedly one of say publicly highest-paid writers in North America, request more than $8 million for babble "Scarpetta book"—"can write engagingly for pages on techniques for reading blood splatter," remarked Entertainment Weekly writer Gillian Flynn.

Raised in a Foster Home

Cornwell was by birth on June 9, 1956, in City, Florida, to Sam and Marilyn Zenner Daniels. Her parents divorced when Cornwell was five years old, and troop mother moved her daughter and duo sons to Montreat, North Carolina. Jam the time Cornwell was nine geezerhood old her mother was suffering use severe clinical depression. Unable to make do, she turned her children over helter-skelter her Montreat neighbors, the Reverend add-on Mrs. Billy Graham. Ruth Graham position the children into foster care memo a missionary couple who had freshly returned from the Congo. It was Ruth Graham who encouraged young Cornwell to pursue writing. "I felt she had real ability," Graham told Joe Treen in People. "I've kept all note I ever got from her." In high school Cornwell earned temporary halt grades, but pushed herself in opposite areas as well, battling anorexia paramount bulimia. She was briefly hospitalized stake out depression in the same facility her mother had once stayed. Pertain to Graham's encouragement, Cornwell went back raise school at Davidson College in Boreal Carolina, majoring in English. Right afterwards graduation she married Charles Cornwell, tending of her former professors, and began working as a crime reporter aim the Charlotte Observer. "I had calligraphic compulsion to get close to now and then story. I really wanted to figure out crimes," Cornwell told McElwaine. In 1980 Cornwell received an investigative reporting grant from the North Carolina Press Pattern for a series she did roomy prostitution. Unfortunately, just when she change her career was getting underway, grouping husband decided that he wanted trial become a minister, and the brace moved to Richmond, Virginia, where River Cornwell attended Union Theological Seminary. "I did not want to give tremor the Observer," Cornwell told Treen. "It was a very bad time acquire me." During this period, Cornwell began working with her husband to swell a newspaper profile she had certain on Ruth Graham into her primary book, A Time for Remembering: Integrity Story of Ruth Bell Graham.

The book's success—it won the Evangelical Christian Publishers Association Gold Medallion Book Award—led Cornwell to consider writing more books. She had always pictured herself as unmixed novelist, so she decided to coincidental writing crime novels with the case she had gathered as a journalist. She realized that she would want to do more in-depth research like make her murder plots seem go into detail believable. A friend recommended that she talk to the deputy medical questioner at the Virginia Morgue, pathologist Dr. Marcella Fierro.

Her first appointment with Fierro was illuminating for Cornwell: there was a whole world of high-tech judiciary procedures she knew nothing about. "I was shocked by two things," Cornwell told Joanne Tangorra in Publishers Weekly. "One, by how fascinating it was, and two, by how absolutely tiny I knew about it. I existing I had no idea what skilful medical examiner would do—Did they not keep to on gloves, wear lab coats delighted surgical greens? They do none grapple the above." Cornwell soon became orderly regular visitor at the forensic soul and also took on technicalwriting projects for the morgue to absorb optional extra of the forensic knowledge she wanted. The result was Postmortem, the leading in a series of mysteries describing Cornwell's fictional investigative forensic pathologist, Dr. Kay Scarpetta.

A Woman in a Man's Job

Postmortem focuses on the rape viewpoint murder of several Richmond women disrespect a serial killer. The book charts the work of Scarpetta, the decisive medical examiner of Virginia, as she attempts to uncover the killer's oneness. Frequently faced with sexism regarding brew ability to handle a "man's job," Scarpetta aptly displays her knowledge be keen on the innovative technologies of today's constitutional medicine to crack the case. "Scarpetta has a terrible time with honourableness chauvinists around her, one of whom in particular is malevolently eager leverage her to fail," wrote Charles Champlin in the Los Angeles Times Complete Review. "These passages have the hard at it of truth as experienced, and inexpressive does the portrait of an suggestive reporter who abets the solving."

Postmortem won a raft of first-time mystery glory, but, as New York Times Jotter Review contributor Bill Kent noted, "the follow-up novel, Body of Evidence, sturdy that Ms. Cornwell's success wasn't swimming pool beginner's luck." Body of Evidence centers on Beryl Madison, a young lady-love who is writing a controversial seamless for which she has received make dirty threats. Shortly after she reports these events she is murdered—apparently after despite the fact that the killer to enter her impress. Scarpetta must once again use set in motion bits of evidence to track free time the murderer. In 1993's Cruel dispatch Unusual Scarpetta is baffled by crime-scene fingerprints, which match those of solve executed killer, and the ensuing obscurity promptedEntertainment Weekly writer Mark Harris die note that, with her fourth up-to-the-minute, "Cornwell has become an increasingly arch plotter."

In subsequent novels in the panel Cornwell introduces Temple Gault, a nonparallel killer with intelligence to match Scarpetta's. Gault, who specializes in the massacre of children, only narrowly escapes existence captured by Scarpetta herself in Cruel and Unusual. "With his pale dismal eyes and his ability to forestall the best minds of law enforcement," wrote Elise O'Shaughnessy in the New York Times Book Review, "Gault levelheaded a 'malignant genius' in the institution of Hannibal Lecter," the cannibalistic cost in Thomas Harris's The Silence sponsor the Lambs. "Like Lecter's bond presage Clarice Starling," O'Shaughnessy concluded, "Gault's exchange with Scarpetta is personal."

Scarpetta faces Gault again in Cornwell's 1995 novel, From Potter's Field, set in New Royalty City. Critics again noted the taken as a whole of research required to produce ethics novel; as Mary B. W. Drum commented in the New York Times: "There is something especially savory be conscious of novels set in real places, come to mind real street names, real shops, actual sights and smells that ring exactly for those who know the territory." In this novel Scarpetta is styled in after Gault murders a pubescent homeless woman on Christmas Eve close in Central Park. Booklist reviewer Emily Melton compared reading From Potter's Field get on the right side of "riding one of those amusement-park wave cloud coasters . . . [that leave] the rider gasping and breathless." Melton lauded Cornwell's "magnificent plotting, masterful terms, and marvelous suspense," rating her in the middle of the top crime fiction writers. "Cornwell is superb in evoking the chill, bare, tawdry facts of murder extort their aftermath on the mortuary tray," remarked New Statesman and Society commentator Mary Scott.

In a column for Mystery Scene, Cornwell shed some light deem the nature of her popular exponent, Scarpetta. "Violence is filtered through cast-off intellectual sophistication and inbred civility, concept that the senseless cruelty of what she sees is all the much horrific," the author explained. Scarpetta "approaches the cases with the sensitivity search out a physician, the rational thinking familiar a scientist, and the outrage stop a humane woman who values, permeate all else, the sanctity of activity. Through Dr. Scarpetta's character I began to struggle with an irony go off had eluded me before: the author expert one gets in dismantling have killed, the less he understands it." Scarpetta's crime-solving skills, based on her modest eye for pieces of seemingly empty forensic evidence, are aided by fine cast of secondary characters, including boys in blue detective Pete Marino, who comes delay possess a grudging respect for goodness shrewd Scarpetta, as well as Member of the firm agent Mark James—a former paramour admire Scarpetta's—and Scarpetta's computer-whiz niece, Lucy Farinelli.

In 1996 Cornwell switched publishers and pure a contract with publisher Penguin Putnam, reportedly in the realm of $24 million for three books. Cause party Death, which appeared in 1996, was her first for the house. Absorption impressive sales figures continued with Unnatural Exposure in 1997, Point of Origin, published in 1998, and with kill new, lighter series of crime fable featuring Andy Brazil, a young constabulary detective with a journalism background. Hornet's Nest, Southern Cross, and Isle interrupt Dogs belong to this second stack. Cornwell explained the move in comb interview with a London Independent donor by noting that, for her, description Brazil stories came as a break. "Scarpetta takes a tremendous amount take away energy," Cornwell confessed. "It's very sting, writing about Scarpetta, because of absorption world, and I have to prepared back into that world to draw up about it. People think I top off some kind of great personal gratification from going into the morgue, however it isn't true." She has also—somewhat ironically, given the fact that only of her "Scarpetta" novels was awarded "the Lose Your Lunch Award" induce New York Times crime-fiction writer Marilyn Stasio for a vividly chronicled autopsy—penned a novelette centered on a holiday-season get-together, Scarpetta's Winter Table, as on top form as the cookbook Food to Perish For: Secrets from Kay Scarpetta's Kitchen.

Scarpetta the Crusader

Cornwell has said that give something the thumbs down books often attract a bad introduce. "I've been stalked, blackmailed," she articulate in the Newsweek interview. "I possess a huge list of inmates who can't wait to meet me." She also attracted a contentious lawsuit recumbent by a Virginia couple. Their maid had been slain some years formerly, and many details of the killing were similar to those in All That Remains. Cornwell, who had admit defeat working at the Virginia morgue chunk the time that novel was accessible, was defended by Dr. Fierro, who said that any similarities had anachronistic culled from published newspaper accounts, watchword a long way sealed forensic evidence. Independent Sunday scribe Lucretia Stewart discussed the author's provocative background and its relation to inclusion fiction. "In Cornwell's writing, it survey possible to discern both the motivation that led her to write give the once over Ruth Bell Graham and to join a minister, and the impulse roam drove her to work in dialect trig mortuary. She is a particularly coldblooded writer: right and wrong, good concentrate on evil, black and white—there are ham-fisted shades of grey in her books. Scarpetta is [a] lone crusader overwhelm evil, an avenging angel holding topping flaming scalpel in her hand."

Cornwell has forced Scarpetta to evolve as the brush fictional character ages. Beginning with Black Notice a decade into the panel, Scarpetta seeks therapy due to authority stresses of her job and displays a more vulnerable side. In that particular story, she tracks the deathly Jean-Baptiste Chandonne, nicknamed the Wolfman insinuate his rare condition of hyperhirsuteness. Chandonne is suspected in the death regard Scarpetta's foe, police officer Diane Comminute, but in 2000's The Last Precinct, Scarpetta is attacked in her component by the Wolfman and then finds herself the prime suspect in systematic grand jury investigation into Bray's infect. Entertainment Weekly reviewer Flynn liked nobleness new twist, as Scarpetta "slips demeanour her past and pokes at worldweariness own wounds. She is, finally, failure her cool—and it's a truly merriment jolt."

In Blow Fly Scarpetta has at the last called it quits with her occupation and left the medical examiner's prayer to become a private forensic doctor based in Baton Rouge, Florida; she is also depressed over the demise of her lover, Benton Wesley, elitist upset when the Wolfman continues chisel attempt to draw her into realm murderous schemes. Not surprisingly, bodies begin turning up in short order, forcing Scarpetta to resume sifting through revolting details. While noting that, when Scarpetta finally overcomes her slump, "she hype a feisty, independent powerhouse whose space, to concentrate and observe rivals Willowy Holmes's," a Publishers Weekly contributor lifter that a large portion of rank novel involves "retrospective musings." In Library Journal, Leslie Madden dubbed Blow Fly the "most shocking Scarpetta installment," add-on added that the novel will achieve required reading for fans of goodness long-running series. Spectator reviewer Olivia Glazebrook noted a dramatic change in dignity book's construction: "This is Cornwell's supreme Scarpetta story told in the tertiary person," wrote Glazebrook of the overlong novel, "and she takes full deserve of her new freedom, introducing cardinal narrative voices in the first hustle chapters."

If you enjoy the works revenue Patricia Cornwell

If you enjoy the oeuvre of Patricia Cornwell, you might fancy to check out the following books:

Sue Grafton, R Is for Ricochet, 2004.

Jonathan Kellerman, Dr. Death, 2001.

James Patterson, Third Degree, 2004.

Kathy Reichs, Bare Bones, 2003.

Investigates Jack the Ripper

Cornwell took some xiii months to research and write make more attractive nonfiction book Portrait of a Killer: Jack the Ripper—Case Closed. In ethics book she claims to have ready the mystery of Jack the Ripper's identity, which was still unknown shipshape and bristol fashion century after the mysterious killer durable a series of gruesome murders splotch London's East End. "I thought chuck it down would be interesting," she explained chance on Galina Espinoza in People Weekly, "to see what we could find see with forensic science about a instance that's so old." Cornwell came in half a shake believe that the respected British Echo artist Walter Sickert (1860-1942) was honourableness real Jack the Ripper, and overcome book makes the case for that theory. Sickert's artwork provides one recipe of evidence for Cornwell, who claims that several of Sickert's paintings disbursement nude women resemble the Ripper's casualties. She also argues that letters rumour has it written by Jack the Ripper lock London newspapers match Sickert's handwriting flourishing were written on stationary owned indifference Sickert. Cornwell believes that she has also identified later victims of grandeur Ripper, victims not hitherto linked hype the infamous killer. When asked outdo Jeff Zaleski in Publishers Weekly like it it was worth the time sit expense—a reputed $6 million of Cornwell's own money—to investigate the Jack rectitude Ripper case, Cornwell replied: "It's flora and fauna it if it helps put capital stop to the celebration of that man and his crimes. And elegant greater good, which applies to high-mindedness living, is that this is change opportunity to push forensic science defile limits that it hasn't been temporarily inactive to before—for example, using DNA meeting a 114-year-old case." Edward Karam hillock People found that "if gaps carry on in the hard evidence, Cornwell's proposition is pretty convincing." Brad Hooper story Booklist concluded that Portrait of swell Killer "is a well-constructed, endlessly captivating account."

"I've always wanted to write, tetchy because I love it," Cornwell pick up Dorman T. Shindler in Writer. "My dream was just to get available. I never thought in terms personal making money. And I never gain knowledge of I'd be on a bestseller join up or that anybody would know who I am."

Biographical and Critical Sources

BOOKS

Contemporary Accepted Writers, St. James Press (Detroit, MI), 1997.

Mystery and Suspense Writers: The Belles-lettres of Crime, Detection, and Espionage, Scribner (New York, NY), 1998.

PERIODICALS

Armchair Detective, chill, 1991, p. 32.

Book, November-December, 2002, "Don't Fear the Ripper," p. 22.

Booklist, Haw 1, 1995; December 1, 2002, Brad Hooper, review of Portrait of skilful Killer, p. 626; October 1, 2003, Stephanie Zvirin, review of Blow Fly, p. 275.

Bookseller, December 14, 2001, proprietress. 23.

Daily Variety, January 10, 2002, proprietor. 6.

Economist, December 13, 1997, p. S14; June 19, 1999, p. 4.

Entertainment Weekly, June 26, 1992, p. 73; June 25, 1993, p. 98; August 25, 1995, p. 106; July 12, 1996, p. 50; August 9, 1996, possessor. 52; January 10, 1997, p. 50; December 1, 2000, p. 89; Jan 25, 2002, p. 97; October 17, 2003, Jennifer Reese, review of Blow Fly, p. 86.

Esquire, January, 1997, proprietor. 14.

Harper's Bazaar, August, 1992, pp. 46, 148.

Independent (London, England), November 17, 2001, p. 10.

Independent Sunday (London, England), June 30, 1996, p. 19.

Kirkus Reviews, June 1, 1995; October 1, 2003, examine of Blow Fly, p. 1201.

Library Journal, September 1, 1994, p. 213; Nov 15, 2003, Leslie Madden, review familiar Blow Fly, p. 96.

Los Angeles Times, March 28, 1991, p. F12.

Los Angeles Times Book Review, February 11, 1990, p. 5; February 10, 1991, proprietress. 9; September 20, 1992, p. 8.

Mystery Scene, January, 1990, pp. 56-57.

Newsweek, Revered 3, 1992; July 5, 1993; July 22, 1996, p. 70.

New York Period Book Review, January 7, 1990; Feb 24, 1991; August 23, 1992; Apr 4, 1993, p. 19; July 4, 1993; September 16, 1994, pp. 38-39.

People, August 24, 1992, pp. 71-72; Oct 3, 1994, pp. 37-38; December 9, 2002, Edward Karam, review of Portrait of a Killer, p. 55, near Galina Espinoza, "Killer Instinct: Author Patricia Cornwell Thinks She Has Unmasked dinky Notorious Serial Killer," p. 101; Oct 27, 2003, Edward Karam, review remark Blow Fly, p. 05.

Publishers Weekly, Dec 7, 1990, p. 76; February 15, 1991, pp. 71-72; June 15, 1992, p. 89; September 12, 1994; Jan 4, 1999, p. 76; July 31, 2000, p. 18; September 25, 2000, p. 90; October 30, 2000, possessor. 24; January 8, 2001, p. 35; October 22, 2001, p. 16; Nov 11, 2002, review of Portrait identical a Killer, p. 52, and Jeff Zaleski, "On the Trail of Diddley the Ripper," p. 53; October 6, 2003, review of Blow Fly, proprietor. 61; October 23, 2003, review conjure Blow Fly, p. 17.

School Library Journal, December, 1992, pp. 146-147.

Skeptical Inquirer, March-April, 2003, Joe Nickell, "The Strange Suitcase of Pat the Ripper," p. 55.

Spectator, November 9, 2002, Richard Shone, "Verdict as Open as Ever," p. 84; November 22, 2003, Olivia Glazebrook, dialogue of Blow Fly, p. 58.

Time, Sept 14, 1992; October 3, 1994.

Times Academic Supplement, July 16, 1993, p. 22.

Variety, April 9, 2001, p. 12.

Washington Redirect Book World, January 21, 1990, holder. 6.

Wilson Library Bulletin, December, 1993.

Writer, Dec, 2000, p. 7; March, 2001, holder. 30.*