by John Valeri
Patricia Cornwell has been at the forefront of crime fiction’s pioneering authors since initiating the forensics boom with Postmortem in 1990. That book—the first to win the Edgar, Creasey, Anthony, and Macavity awards and the French Prix du Roman d’Aventure prize in a single year—introduced iconic sleuth Dr. Kay Scarpetta. A medical examiner possessing unflappable integrity, Scarpetta is not only a voice for the dead but a conscience for the living. In acknowledgment of her groundbreaking character, Cornwell received the 1999 Sherlock Award for best detective created by an American.
Today, with the release of her latest Scarpetta novel, Sharp Force (Grand Central Publishing)—in
which a serial killer known as the Phantom Slasher terrorizes Northern Virginia unabated—and a
television series showcasing the character’s continued ingenuity, Cornwell once again proves that
time and technology are no match for her or for the indomitable Scarpetta.
John B. Valeri: Sharp Force takes place over Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, with Scarpetta in pursuit of a killer who has been striking on the holidays. How does using the backdrop of the Christmas season enhance the book’s potency?
Patricia Cornwell: Well, a holiday like Christmas becomes a character. People tend to forget that when you’re writing a book, whether it’s a thriller or a more traditional murder mystery or any sort of novel, there are characters that aren’t people. Your setting is a very important character. Christmas … it’s such a heavy, loaded time of year, and it’s very poignant when bad things happen then. So for Scarpetta, [the book] opens and she’s in the morgue. She’s doing this horrible autopsy of a man that seems to have fallen into the Potomac River and was found maybe a week or so later. These are called “floaters”—that’s the slang the cops have, because they’re decomposing and it’s really a horror show what water does to the body when you’ve been in it for a while. So imagine that. It’s terrible that she’s in the morgue by
herself with this case. She doesn’t know why this guy is dead but it’s looking more like he might have had a heart attack before he went into the water. But he also fired his gun. Did he see something that scared him and that’s why he maybe had a heart attack? Meanwhile, it’s Christmas Eve and there’s Christmas music playing on the tinny little boombox that’s on the counter in the autopsy suite. And so all that, the pathos of it, gets ratcheted up when you realize it’s Christmas Eve and you have the contrast of that to what she’s doing at the moment.
JBV: This all has an effect on Scarpetta, who is often constrained in what she can do or say by virtue of her role as chief medical examiner. And then you introduce [investigator] Pete Marino, who is not exactly known for his sensitivity, into the mix. Tell us about their unusual Christmas Eve mission and how that creates another layer of tension.
PC: [Scarpetta] is thinking about this guy’s family. She’s got his personal effects, including a Christmas present that he bought for his wife that was in his coat pocket, a little jewelry box. Now, in this day and age, most medical examiners’ offices don’t allow people to pick up personal effects in person anymore because of Covid and so many other things that make it unsafe to allow the public into these facilities. Typically, you mail it. And Scarpetta says, “You know, Marino, the lady and her kids, two little twin boys and their mother, are left alone on Christmas Eve with this horrible thing that happened … I’m just going to stop and drop these things off in person.” Well, Marino’s not happy about that. “You don’t even know these people, Doc.” “Well, it’s Christmas Eve, and sometimes you’ve got to do something a little bit nicer for people than usual.” And it becomes quite the scene, very picturesque because it’s snowing and she and Marino are driving through old town Alexandria with all these colonial buildings and the beautiful Christmas lights. He’s in his big truck and they pull up to the house with all the lights in the window and the Christmas tree and the little faces peering out of the glass at these strangers who have arrived. And then you get reminded once again about why they are there, and it’s not because of something fun. Everything is about contrast. You want things to push against each other. You have the beauty of the holiday season and the poignancy of small-town America, but then in the face of that … whatever has happened to this man is connected to much bigger bad things that are going on.
JBV: Since rebooting the series with Autopsy [2021], you’ve explored more speculative territory—Bigfoot, UFOs, autopsies in space. And the last time we spoke, you teased that there would be a ghostly element to this book. Indeed, there is a haunting, but it’s not the traditional kind. It’s a hologram that the Phantom Slasher sends to stalk his victims before he actually moves in for the kill. Tell me about the inspiration for this menace.
PC: I’m fascinated by the paranormal kind of stuff, and I try to tackle subjects that people mostly laugh at. They’ll tell you, “Oh, don’t do that. People will think you’re silly.” But I’m wondering what we can explore about UFOs or a death in outer space, which hasn’t actually happened yet … How is Scarpetta going to handle it? The key is not the Bigfoot or the ghost or the UFO. The key is what she does with it. I’ve had a lot of fun playing with some of those subjects … In Sharp Force, I wanted to explore ghosts. We’ve all had eerie things happen. Is it something from another dimension? Is that what we’re perceiving? So I thought, I’m just going to start looking into this. One thing I do know is that we have technologies today that can imitate almost anything you think is paranormal or magic, holograms being the biggest one. When you see Michael Jackson’s hologram walking across the stage, your heart almost stops because it’s an eerie, eerie thing to see. This technology is going gangbusters. And that combined with drones, which could project such a thing as [the Phantom Slasher] … is real technology. Everything I talk about in this book is possible. I have consultants that I use to bounce stuff off to make sure it’s feasible. I don’t want somebody looking at it and saying, “That could never happen.”
JBV: The Phantom Slasher is both brilliant and terrifying in its rendering. Even Scarpetta has a sighting!
PC: That awful ghost … Especially because the killer can also play creepy horror music. There’s this thing floating at the foot of your bed with glowing red eyes. Oh my Lord. You wouldn’t have to kill me. I’d already be dead by then … There’s a scene when Scarpetta gets home in the fog and sees these red lights, what looks like red taillights coming through the gate and down the driveway, and then realizes they’re not connected to anything. It’s just the ghost coming! I like to push the same kinds of buttons that go back to my childhood. You know, let your childhood imagination run loose with the scientific part of yourself and see what you come up with.
For the full interview here’s a link to purchase issue 77 of Strand