Black Notice

As Virginia's Chief Medical Examiner, Dr. Kay Scarpetta knows all about investigating bizarre murder cases. When she examines some near-skeletal remains found locked on board a foreign ship, Kay finds herself entangled in a web of intrigue and deceit of epic proportions. What is the significance of John Doe's tattoo? Why has Interpol summoned her to its French homebase? If Scarpetta obeys secret orders, what will be the potentially disastrous consequences? This much-loved heroine must take on some of the world's most formidable enemies in Black Notice, another thriller from Patricia Cornwell's award-winning fiction series.

Now Cornwell delivers a high-stakes Kay Scarpetta novel with an intrigue that will take Kay an ocean's length away from home. The nightmare begins when a cargo ship arriving at Richmond's Deep Water Terminal from Belgium is discovered to be transporting a locked, sealed container holding the decomposed remains of a stowaway.

The autopsy performed by Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Kay Scarpetta initially reveals neither a cause of death nor an identification. But the victim's personal effects and an odd tattoo take Scarpetta on a hunt for information that leads to Interpol's headquarters in Lyon, France, where she receives critical instructions: Go to the Paris morgue to receive forbidden, secret evidence and then return to Virginia to carry out a mission. It is a mission that could ruin her career.

In a story that careens across international borders, "Black Notice" puts Dr. Kay Scarpetta directly in harm's way and places her and those she holds dear at mortal risk.

Patricia Cornwell is an award-winning novelist whose books have consistently appeared on the New York Times bestseller list. Cornwell was born in Florida in 1956. When she was nine years old, her mother tried to give her and her two brothers to evangelist Billy Graham and his wife to care for. For a while the children lived with missionaries since their mother was unable to care for them. Cornwell was a police reporter for The Charlotte Observer and worked in the chief medical examiner's office in Richmond, Virginia, for six years as a computer analyst. She also volunteered to ride with the police during homicide investigations. While working for the medical examiner, she began to write novels. Although the award-winning novel Postmortem was initially rejected by seven different publishers, once it was published it became the only novel ever to win the Edgar, Creasey, Anthony, and Macavity awards, and the French Prix du Roman d'Adventure, in one year. She is also the only woman in the United States to receive England's most prestigious crime-writing award, the Gold Dagger. Cornwell's novels are both national and international bestsellers. They have been translated into several foreign languages. Some of her novels are Body of Evidence, All That Remains, Cruel & Unusual, The Body Farm, From Potter's Field, Unnatural Exposure, Hornet's Nest, and A Time for Remembering, a biography of Ruth Bell Graham, the wife of Billy Graham.