Kay Scarpetta has been training at the Dover Port Mortuary, mastering the art of 'virtual autopsy' - a groundbreaking procedure that could soon revolutionise forensic science. And it is not too long before these new skills urgently need to be put into practice. A young man drops dead, apparently from a heart condition, eerily close to Scarpetta's home. But when his body is examined the next morning, there are stunning indications that he may have been alive when he was zipped inside a pouch and locked inside the cooler. When the revolutionary 3D radiology scans reveal more shocking details about internal injuries unlike any Scarpetta has ever seen, Scarpetta realizes that this is a case of murder - and that she is fighting a cunning and uniquely cruel enemy. Now it is a race against time to discover who and why before more people die. But that time is running out ...
In this fast-paced story, we travel back to the beginning of Scarpetta's professional career when she enlisted in the Air Force to pay off her medical school debt. Now, more than twenty years later, her secret military ties have brought her back to Dover Air Force Base, and she is confronted with a case that could ruin her both professionally and personally.
Kay Scarpetta has arranged to meet an inmate at the high-security Georgia Prison for Women. The prisoner is a convicted sex offender and the mother of a vicious and diabolically brilliant killer. Against advice, Scarpetta is determined to hear this woman out - she believes she may hold some answers to the murder of her former deputy. But soon she finds connections to a string of grisly killings, including the slaughter of a Savannah family years earlier. She can see a pattern to these killings, but who is behind them and why? As she learns more, Scarpetta is compelled to conclude that this is only the beginning of something far more destructive: a terrifying terrain of conspiracy and potential terrorism on an international scale. And she is the only one who can stop it...
Sexta entrega de la saga protagonizada por la doctora Kay Scarpetta. Este t#tulo es uno de los m#s exitosos de su trayectoria, dentro de la serie. Parece que Temple Brooks Gault, el asesino en serie que se ha convertido en la #ltima pesadilla de la investigadora Scarpetta, ha vuelto a cometer un asesinato. La v#ctima es una mujer blanca, encontrada en el Central Park de Nueva York, cuya identidad no consiguen determinar. Las pistas encontradas en el escenario del crimen y en el cuerpo de la v#ctima son tan evidentes que parecen dejadas a prop#sitos como indicios de un desaf#o. Scarpetta no puede pasar por alto que las pistan la se#alan a ella misma como la pr#xima presa. Aunque cuente con la ayuda del FBI, Scarpetta sabe que ha de jugar sola y que deber# hacerlo en el terreno de Gault, es decir, en los t#neles del metro de Nueva York.
A woman has vanished while digging a dinosaur bone bed in the remote wilderness of Canada. Somehow, the only evidence has made its way to the inbox of Chief Medical Examiner Kay Scarpetta, over two thousand miles away in Boston. She has no idea why. But as events unfold with alarming speed, Scarpetta begins to suspect that the paleontologists disappearance is connected to a series of crimes much closer to home: a gruesome murder, inexplicable tortures, and trace evidence from the last living creatures of the dinosaur age.
Scarpetta ist als Zeugin im Prozess gegen einen Ol-Tycoon geladen, der seine spurlos verschwundene Ehefrau ermordet haben soll. Wenige Stunden zuvor wurde eine mumifizierte Frauenleiche aus dem Bostoner Hafen geborgen. ist sie die Vermisste? Fieberhaft beginnt die beruhmte Rechtsmedizinerin mit der Untersuchung, wahrend die Anwaltin des Angeklagten alles daran setzt, Scarpettas Reputation zu untergraben. Daneben machen Scarpetta noch ganz andere Probleme zu schaffen: Chefermittler Pete Marino gerat unter Mordverdacht, und Ehemann Benton Wesley scheint sich von ihr abzuwenden. Steuert sie beruflich und privat auf eine Katastrophe zu?
