Today, Hartford Books Examiner is honored to welcome Patricia Cornwell.
A former investigative reporter for the Charlotte Observer, Cornwell wrote an award-winning biography of Ruth Bell Graham, A Time for Remembering, before making her crime fiction debut with Postmortem in 1990. That book introduced Dr. Kay Scarpetta to readers and won the Edgar, Creasey, Anthony, and Macavity awards as well as the French Prix du Roman d’Aventure in a single year. In 1993, Cruel and Unusual won Great Britain’s prestigious Gold Dagger Award; Cornwell also holds the distinction of being the only American author to have won the Galaxy British Book Awards’ Books Direct Crime Thriller of the Year Award in 2008 (for Book of the Dead). Scarpetta herself won the Sherlock Award for best detective created by an American author in 1999. An expert in forensic science and police procedure, Cornwell is the former Director or Applied Forensics at the National Forensic Academy and a current member of the Harvard-affiliated McLean Hospital’s National Council, where she is an advocate for psychiatric research.
Cornwell’s newest, Port Mortuary, is out today from G.P. Putnam’s Sons. The eighteenth entry in the Scarpetta series, the book marks a return to the first person narrative last seen in 2000’s The Last Precinct. Cornwell, who has recently embraced social-networking via Twitter and Facebook, will embark on her first book tour in ten years in support of the novel. Those readers wishing to attend can view the itinerary on her web-site.
Port Mortuary synopsis:
Port Mortuary, the title of Patricia Cornwell's 18th Scarpetta novel, is literally a port for the dead. In this fast-paced story, a treacherous path from Scarpetta's past merges with the high tech highway she now finds herself on. We travel back to the beginning of her professional career, when she enlisted in the Air Force to pay off her medical school debt and found herself ensnared in a gruesome case of what seemed to be vicious, racially motivated hate crimes against two Americans in South Africa. Now, more than twenty years and many career successes later, her secret military ties have drawn her to Dover Air Force Base, where she has been immersed in a training fellowship to master the art of CT-assisted virtual autopsy--a procedure the White House has mandated that she introduce in the private sector.
As the chief of the new Cambridge Forensic Center in Massachusetts, a joint venture of the state and federal governments and MIT, Scarpetta is confronted with a case that could shut down her new facility and ruin her personally and professionally. A young man drops dead, apparently from a cardiac arrhythmia, eerily close to Scarpetta's new Cambridge 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 Center's cooler. Various 3-D radiology scans reveal more shocking details about internal injuries unlike any Scarpetta has ever seen. These suggest the possibility of a conspiracy to cause mass casualties. She realizes that she is fighting a cunning and cruel enemy that is invisible as she races against time to discover who and why before more people die.
In Port Mortuary, Patricia Cornwell brings Scarpetta together with Marino, Benton, and Lucy in an intimate way that is reminiscent of the early novels, and we welcome a voice we haven't heard in years. The point of view is Scarpetta's, and this is her story.
(You can view Hartford Books Examiner’s full review of Port Mortuary here.)
Now, Patricia Cornwell takes us behind-the-scenes of Port Mortuary (and beyond)…
1) PORT MORTUARY marks a return to Scarpetta’s point of view. What made you decide that it was time to revisit her voice? How’d she respond to the company after ten years of solitude?
That's a great question because I got surprised when I first dabbled with returning to her point of view. I didn't think it would be all that different from the last ten years of Scarpetta novels, but in fact I realized she'd changed, evolved, was more reflective of the present, the future and certainly her past and has very strong opinions about the modern world we live in and her own ideas about the other characters. I'm not sure why I decided to changed back to her point of view for Port Mortuary except that I sensed she had a dark secret that had to do with the military, and I felt it best to explore it internally and let her tell the story in her own voice. I loved getting back inside her psyche and plan to do it again with the next novel.
2) If memory serves, you once noted that your experience with researching and writing PORTRAIT OF A KILLER: JACK THE RIPPER – CASE CLOSED had forever changed how you approach the craft. Can you elaborate? Did this project spark some of the changes noted in the subsequent Scarpetta novels?
Portrait of a Killer precipitated a growing spurt as a writer. For one thing, it whetted my appetite for exploring the different perspectives of different characters, for writing in the third person point of view. Which is what I did with the very next Scarpetta novel (Blow Fly). Experimenting with different points of view has changed me as a writer. I think it's made me more flexible, insightful and has enlarged the stage I set the stories on. And investigating the Jack the Ripper case certainly sharpened my own investigative skills, and that can't be anything but helpful. It was a humbling experience too. Were I to do it again, I would not add Case Closed to the title. That case will never be closed.
3) You will be embarking on your first book tour in a decade in support of PORT MORTUARY. What inspired you to return to the road and how do you think the climate has changed, if at all? Also, what can fans expect from a Patricia Cornwell signing event?
I've been wanting to get back on the road for years. In this past post-911 decade, technology dictated a more remote way of marketing (mainly through ads and satellite TV/radio tours), and a disinclination on the part of fans to show up at events such as book signings. So book signings became a thing of the past for a lot of authors, which was a real shame, in my opinion because these marketing efforts might have reached the masses but the result was far less personal. I've missed seeing the fans and knowing what is on their minds, and everyone who works with me agreed this time I should go back out there. The trend now is to be more personal--and I mean sincerely personal (I'm doing a lot with Twitter and FaceBook, too). I think the way things are going is terrific, at least for me because I like my fans a lot and always have and I'm not afraid to communicate with them or to meet them. I'm very much looking forward to seeing those who come to the signings and fans can expect what I've always offered: I'll get to every one of them no matter how long the line and do my best to sign as many books as they want. And everyone will have fun!
4) You have recently emerged as an active member of Facebook and Twitter. What do you see as the personal and professional benefits of social networking? Do you ever worry that such forums invite a false sense of intimacy between reader and writer?
What is imperative about these social technologies is that one is honest and sincere. Don't offer an interaction with fans if you don't mean it. For one thing, people aren't stupid and they sniff artifice and gimmicks a mile away. Recycled canned quotes from Confucius and the constant placement of ads will go over like a lead balloon is you keep it up, and fans will feel manipulated. But there is no question FaceBook and Twitter are tricky. I am honest but I try to be cautious about boundaries being crossed in either direction (fans crossing mine or me crossing theirs). I think it is a powerful way to communicate and galvanize the community most interested in your work. While it might invite a false sense of intimacy, that can happen anyway depending on the personality involved. (People can read your book and think they know you well, for that matter.)
5) It is common knowledge that you like to live within the world that you write about. Seeing as Scarpetta is at the forefront of the ‘high tech highway,’ is it a challenge for you to decide what of your research should and shouldn’t be shared with readers? How do you rectify your responsibilities as researcher versus author?
I have great clarity about what I should and shouldn't share with my readers. I may not always get it right to the satisfaction of everyone, of course, but I know when something is too painful or graphic and I don't share that. I have many memories of things I've seen and heard--and they aren't going to be shared. The same goes for information that I've been asked to keep to myself (by law enforcement, the military, medical professionals, etc.) At times I overhear or witness something that isn't for distribution and I always do my best to honor the source. As I say to these people who are kind enough to share their expertise with me: "Your work comes first. I'm just a novelist."
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With deep appreciation to Ms. Cornwell for sharing her time and thoughts, and to Mih-Ho Cha of G.P. Putnam’s Sons for facilitating this interview.
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A related article from Hartford Books Examiner:
Port Mortuary by Patricia Cornwell (A book review)
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