Depraved Heart

No.1 New York Times bestselling author Patricia Cornwell delivers the twenty-third engrossing thriller in her high-stakes series starring medical examiner Dr. Kay Scarpetta.

'Dr. Kay Scarpetta ... [is] an awesome force in the field of forensic science' New York Times Book Review


Dr. Kay Scarpetta is working a suspicious death scene in Cambridge, Massachusetts when an emergency alert sounds on her phone. A video link lands in her text messages and seems to be from her computer genius niece Lucy. But how can it be? It's clearly a surveillance film of Lucy taken almost twenty years ago. As Scarpetta watches she begins to learn frightening secrets about her beloved niece that raise dangerous legal implications, leaving Scarpetta confused, worried, and unable to turn to Lucy, her FBI husband Benton Wesley or her investigative partner Pete Marino.

Cornwell launches these unforgettable characters on an intensely psychological odyssey that includes the mysterious death of a Hollywood mogul's daughter, aircraft wreckage on the bottom of the sea in the Bermuda triangle, a grisly gift left in the back of a crime scene truck, and videos from the past that threaten to destroy Scarpetta's entire world and everyone she loves.

With the shocking twists, high-wire tension, and cutting-edge forensic detail that she is famous for, Cornwell will captivate readers and prove yet again why she's the world's #1 bestselling crime writer.