Sharp Force

"Sharp Force." The book? Not so sharp.

I took a chance of reading this book because of he Scarpetta miniseries on Prime Video starring Nicole Kidman and Jamie Lee Curtis.

Initially, I wouldn't recommend the series to anyone, but I've since revisited it after reading "Sharp Force" and find it worth the bother if you can get past Jamie Lee Curtis and her wrinkled breasts trying to escape from the hardly age appropriate clothing she's wearing. Kay, played by Nicole Kidman, is her sister, and has basically retorted that Dorothy is just plain "cock-happy." Oh boy.

I just finished a book and was looking for another to read. I got the book in hardcover, which I prefer, for around $14 on Amazon. There is one thing about a best-selling author, even hardcover books are cheap.

The Scarpetta miniseries helps in identifying the characters in "Sharp Force". The miniseries rocks back and forth though time, necessitating another actress to played the younger Kay Scarpetta, the Chief Medical Officer of Virginia

There is a long-running BBC series called Silent Witness that's been playing out for decades with a female forensic pathologist headlining the cast. Lately that's been Emilia Fox, playing Nikki Alexander as the pathologist who we see doing the cadaver cutting, extracting and weighing of organs as they are placed dripping on a handy scale.

:Silent Witness: is a great series. The author of the Scarpetta series of book is Patricia Cornwell, who worked in a chief medical officer's office in Virginia. She wasn't a medical person, but was certainly in the room when bodies were examined.

"Sharp Force" is basically a straight narrative starting on Christmas Day in what can be described as a day in the life of Kay Scarpetta. It's easy to follow, and there are just enough characters that you don't get confused as to who's who.

The arc of the story will challenge your sense of reality when the "Slasher" is following their victims with a drone that produces a hologram that goes through walls and doors to torment the victim.

This is not a science fiction book. It is a crime mystery will all the bells and whistles of what we read about every day: AI brought to life.

Kay Scarpetta's niece is Lucy, Dorothy's child who lives with Kay and her husband because, well, Dorothy is a "shit mother." Kay and her husband have no children.

Lucy is a lesbian who is a cyber special agent and technical expert for the F.B.I., and is mourning the loss of her wife, who she has replaced with an AI agent avatar, Janet, who is Wi-Fi'd into seeing and hearing everything Kay and her husband do, in the house or even in their Tesla car, and who they consult online for background checks.

Lucy can fly the Bureau's helicopter and chases away the news drones from the pain-in-ass news personality, Dana Diletti, who has also been personally threatened by a hologram, that has flooded the sky over the murder scene, a psychiatric hospital on the fictional Virginia Mercy Island with great views of the Potomac, near Ronald Regan International Airport.

Lucy's AI avatar, Janet, is so realistic that she talks and moves as if she's in the same room, listening to the background conversations. Janet has a soothing British accent in the miniseries. Benton, who is a Secret Service profiler, even asks Janet to complete an assignment to get the background information on an individual. Result? "Thank you Janet. Please download your complete report to me and Lucy." I kid you not.

The book is 384, and it's not until Page 246 that Kay and her husband reach to scene of the murdered psychiatrist, Georgine Duvall, who lives in a house on the fictional Mercy island that also has a psychiatric hospital on the grounds.

Georgine is known to Kay, and it turns out was Lucy psychiatrist when Lucy was having trouble in there early college years adapting. In addition to that connection, the house where Georgine was killed is one in which Kay and her husband Benton were looking at to buy when Kay was moving back to Alexandria, Virginia.

Along with Georgine, the Slasher's victim is another person who was in the house at the time and who was nearly killed by the Slasher, Zain Willard, a young man who was staying with the psychiatrist. No sexual relation there apparently, but Zain in the nephew of Senator Calvin Willard, an expected nominee for president.

Pete Marino is first on the scene with the police and the F.B.I. Marino has seen the hologram float outside the victim's house. It is real, and not a product of the imagination.

Why Benson is on the scene is not really understood. He's given Kay a ride from home because she left her car at the morgue the night before and got a ride with her investigator, Pete Marino, a former homicide detective who is married to Kay's sister Dorothy. This is not a soap opera, but a group of people who have a lot of history together. Pete is Kay's investigator on the job.

Patricia Corrnwell must be a vastly popular best-selling author, because I got the hardcover edition on Amazon, new, for $14. Any more, and I wouldn't have bothered. I like a hardcover book, but I think I'm going to drop this one off at the train station when I'm done. It should go before I even get on the train.

Kay's husband is allowed onto the murder scene despite being a Secret Service officer with no apparent reason to be part of the investigation other than to give Kay a ride to Mercy Island because she has been driven home the night before because of raging snow storm by her chief investigator, Pete Marino, a former homicide detective, who undoubtedly has the hots for Kay and is Lucy's step-dad, Marino  is coincidently married to Kay's somewhat hysterical and argumentative sister, Dorothy. No, this is not a soap opera either.

A Senator's nephew was staying in the house on the grounds of the psychiatric hospital with the murdered psychiatrist, making him a possible suspect, except for his nearly fatal wounds suffered from the Slasher. There was nothing sexual going on between him and the psychiatrist. 

His uncle is a strong candidate to gain the nomination for president, and maybe this is why the Secret Service can be there. Benson has seen Zain at White House events, even demonstrating his robot. It's nice he gave his wife a ride and acts as an investigator, with uncertain authority to be there.

All those pages to get to the principal crime scene are taken up by Doc Scarpetta investigating a dead guy who went fishing off a pier at night in December and landed in the drink and died, who may, or may not be related to the bigger picture coming up. Oh, the dead guy fired two shots at something. 

I only came to choose this book because I was just finishing a book and needed another to read when I came across the Prime Video miniseries of Kay Scarpetta, via Amazon. I took in the first episode and stayed away from the rest of them because I couldn't stand watching Jamie Lee Curtis play Kay's sister, who always seems to be theatrically overwrought over something. As portrayed, Nicole Kidman as Kay Scarpetta and Jamie Lee as Dorothy, could in no way have been sisters who have reached adulthood together. Kay would have found a away to kill Dorothy and fudge the cause of death and gotten away with it before either of them was 23.

At another point, as the red herrings get introduced, Benson actually starts to interrogate the robot that the Senator's nephew has in the closet in the psychiatrist's house. Zain is a robotics expert, who has demonstrated his robot dog at the White House. Benson has seen Zain and his robot before. During the "interrogation" the robot's batteries start to run low and he goes to sleep mode. Again, I kid you not. He does prove useful though, if you can imagine that.

I will not introduce any spoilers here for you to avoid. I will tell you the ending is idiotic and is brought to a head by an escaped orangutan who glows on UV light in a greenhouse where legal pot is being grown. Again, I kid you not.

This denouement occurs at the end of the penultimate chapter. The last chapter is a week after the narrative of what has truly been a busy day. for all involved.

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