Patricia Cornwell

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Patricia Cornwell (2011)

Patricia Daniels Cornwell (born June 9, 1956 in Miami , Florida ) is an American writer and inventor of the fictional characters Kay Scarpetta and the trio Judy Hammer, Andrew Brazil and Virginia West.

biography

Cornwell was born in Miami in 1956. She is a descendant of Harriet Beecher Stowe and a child of Pat Daniels. She still has two siblings, an older and a younger brother. After graduating from high school , she went to King College. At the same time she discovered her passion for tennis . She received a scholarship to Davidson College, making her one of the first women to be accepted into that college. Shortly after graduating, she began working as a “girl for everything” at the Charlotte Observer newspaper before becoming a police reporter . Her series of articles on crime in the city of Charlotte won several awards.

Cornwell wrote the biography of Ruth Bell Graham . This was published in 1983 by Harper & Row under the title A Time for Remembering . She received positive reviews and sold well, earning Cornwell its first recognition as a writer. She then received offers for further biographies of religious people. A revision of this first biography appeared in 1997 as Ruth, a Portrait: The Ruth Bell Graham Story .

The breakthrough as a writer Patricia Cornwell succeeded in 1990 with the detective novel A Case for Kay Scarpetta (Original title: Post Mortem ) and created in the same figure of the medical examiner . The crime series that started back then is continued to this day. Patricia Cornwell's novels also soon earned a reputation for doing good research on her actions. Nevertheless, in 2004 in The Demons Do Not Rest in an episode of the book (albeit not relevant to the action), which takes place in Stettin , she wrote that Germany had prevented foreign ships from entering the port of Szczecin since the Second World War and was thus mainly responsible for the apparent poverty in the Polish port city.

In 2002 Patricia Cornwell published Who Was Jack the Ripper , a book about an investigation she funded and directed into the identity of the famous serial killer in late 19th century London. Here were technologies such as DNA -Untersuchungen of legacies former suspect used. Hobby criminologist Cornwell came to the conclusion that the painter Walter Sickert must be the culprit. However, the investigations and the theory derived from them are highly controversial among those familiar with the Ripper case and scientifically untenable.

Cornwell was married to Professor Charles Cornwell . The marriage ended in divorce in 1989. Cornwell is currently an openly gay person and married Dr. Staci Ann Gruber .

Fictional characters

Kay Scarpetta

It was during the making of A Case for Kay Scarpetta that Cornwell met Marcella Fierro, Virginia state chief of forensic medicine, through whom she learned many details about the forensic work. Cornwell used this knowledge as the basis for the books by Kay Scarpetta.

Kay Scarpetta was in the novel series for a long time, like the real Marcella Fierro, as the chief medical examiner for the state of Virginia. During this time the first eleven books in the series are set. Kay Scarpetta is accompanied in most of these books from three major secondary characters: your gifted niece Lucy Farinelli, the Richmonders policemen Pete Marino and the FBI - profiler Benton Wesley. Since Kay Scarpetta barely has relatives, these figures represent (which also suffer from this deficiency) a kind of surrogate family. In the last area ( The Last Precinct ) Scarpetta is forced from office in Richmond. Cornwell herself stresses the parallels between her own life and that of Kay Scarpettas: both were born in Miami, both are divorced, both worked in forensic medicine, and both had problematic relationships with their fathers.

In the Scarpetta novels published from 1990 to 2000, Cornwell chose the first-person perspective , but in the novels published from 2003 onwards, the authorial narrative situation . Scarpetta now works as a freelance forensic consultant based in Florida. The fate of the minor characters mentioned above is given a much larger space. Lucy Farinelli in particular becomes a driving factor in the plot.

The geographic focus of most of the books in the Scarpetta series is Richmond , the capital of the US state Virginia . The actions of the individual books in the Scarpetta series often refer to one another, so it can be recommended that they be read in chronological order (see below). Recurring motifs in Patricia Cornwell's works are pathologically acting serial perpetrators and the subject of victim protection . The fourth volume in the Scarpetta series Cruel and Unusual (German title: Phantom or Vergebliche All clear ) also deals critically with the subject of the death penalty in the USA.

Patricia Cornwell's thrillers are not so-called “Whodunits” . In some books, the identity of the perpetrator is known from the start. Rather, the way is the goal here; The focus is particularly on the varied investigations in search of the perpetrator (s). Another important subject of the plot is always the not always easy relationships between the main characters mentioned above. As one of the first authors of the genre, Cornwell introduced the type of forensic doctor as the central figure of the plot with her first work .

Hammer, Brazil, West

At the same time, Cornwell is writing another, less successful series of books that deals more with politics and the police apparatus in the USA. Police chief Judy Hammer and her employees Andrew Brazil and Virginia West are the main characters in this series.

Awards

Works

Kay Scarpetta novels

# year Original title German title Remarks
1 1990 Post mortem
  • Post mortem
  • A case for Kay Scarpetta
  • Saturday morning murder
 2005 in the Stern-Krimi-Bibliothek series published in
2006 in the blood sister series as audio book published
Edgar Allan Poe Award , Macavity Award and Anthony Award (each in the category "Best First Novel"); John Creasey Memorial Award , Prix ​​du Roman d'Aventures
2 1990 Body of Evidence
  • Escape
  • A murder for Kay Scarpetta
3 1992 All that remains
  • The fifth couple
  • Jack of Hearts
4th 1993 Cruel and Unusual
  • phantom
  • Unsuccessful all-clear
 Gold Dagger Award 1993
5 1994 The Body Farm
  • Body Farm
  • The secret ABC of the dead
6th 1995 From Potter's Field The dead woman with no name
7th 1996 Cause of Death
  • fault
  • Cloudy water is cold
8th 1997 Unnatural exposure
  • Spoilage
  • The germ of perdition
9 1998 Point of Origin Source of fire
10 1999 Black Notice Stowaway
11 2000 The Last Precinct The last turf
12 2003 Blow Fly The demons do not rest
13 2004 Trace dust
14th 2005 Predator malfunction
15th 2007 Book of the Dead Book of the Dead
16 2008 Scarpetta Scarpetta German: August 2009
17th 2009 The Scarpetta Factor Scarpetta Factor English: October 20, 2009
German: August 19, 2010
18th 2010 Port Mortuary bastard English: November 30, 2010
German: September 16, 2011
19th 2011 Red crap blood English: December 6, 2011
German: October 4, 2012
20th 2011 The Bone Bed Bone bed English: October 16, 2012
German: October 4, 2013
21st 2013 Dust Glare English: November 12, 2013
German: September 16, 2014
22nd 2014 Flesh and Blood Your own flesh and blood English: November 2014
German: September 14, 2015
23 2015 Depraved Heart paranoia English: October 2015
German: September 2016, Hoffmann and Campe, Hamburg, ISBN 978-3-455-40456-2
24 2016 chaos Rigor mortis English: October 2016
German: September 2017, HarperCollins, Hamburg, ISBN 978-3-95967-125-5

and two cookbooks with Kay Scarpetta

  • Kay Scarpetta invites you to table ( Scarpetta's Winter Table , 1998)
  • To die for ( Food to Die For: Secrets From Kay Scarpetta's Kitchen , 2001)

Hammer, West and Brazil

  • The Hornet ( Hornet's Nest , 1997)
  • Southern Cross ( Southern Cross , 1999)
  • Island of the rebels ( Isle of Dogs , 2001)

Win Garano

  • Danger ( At Risk , 2006)
  • Undercover ( The Front , 2008)

more books

  • Ruth, a Portrait: The Ruth Bell Graham Story (1983/1997, biography, not published in German)
  • Life's Little Fable (1999, children's book, not published in German)
  • Who was Jack the Ripper? Portrait of a Killer ( Portrait of a Killer: Jack the Ripper, Case Closed , 2002, non-fiction)

Audiobooks (excerpt)

Film adaptations

  • 2010 Patricia Cornwell - Danger (At Risk) - Director: Tom McLoughlin, with Andie MacDowell, Daniel Sunjata and Ashley Williams
  • 2010 Patricia Cornwell - Undercover (The Front) - Director: Tom McLoughlin, with Andie MacDowell, Daniel Sunjata and Ashley Williams
  • 2012: The Hornet (Hornet's Nest) - Director: Millicent Shelton, with Virginia Madsen, Sherry Stringfield and Robbie Amell

Web links

Commons : Patricia Cornwell  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files

swell

  1. ↑ Patricia Cornwell, “Finally, I feel rooted somewhere,” Telegraph
personal data
SURNAME Cornwell, Patricia
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Cornwell, Patricia Daniels (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American crime novelist
DATE OF BIRTH June 9, 1956
PLACE OF BIRTH Miami , Florida , USA