In “Dust,” Patricia Cornwell’s latest, intrepid medical examiner Kay Scarpetta tracks down “a new enemy” — people so addicted to fame, they’ll literally kill for some attention. “I wanted to focus on financial crime and the shadowy, greedy people who might be capable of almost anything,” Cornwell tells The Post.
“I thought it would be very interesting to have someone about to go to trial turn up dead, and then link the case to serial murders.”
This is Cornwell’s 21st Scarpetta mystery, so it’s a good thing the novelist and her character get along. “We are very close but that doesn’t mean [Kay] always talks to me,” Cornwell says. “But she’s stubborn. If I don’t give her my full attention, I just stare at a blank screen.”
Here’s what’s in Cornwell’s library.
Bonkers: My Life in Laughs
by Jennifer Saunders
Few people are as physically funny as Jennifer Saunders, whose brilliant career I discovered when I became an “Absolutely Fabulous” addict. What’s most intriguing about this memoir is her description of her own creative wiring and process. Her comedy makes me forget the darkness in life.
American Sniper
by Chris Kyle
What strikes me most isn’t Kyle’s record number of kills, but his honesty. I feel his frustration with fighting in a war run by politicians and lawyers, and his painful transition from combat to life at home. We rewire those we groom for war, then expect they’ll somehow revert back to the way they were. Kyle died in February; he was killed on a shooting range.
A Moveable Feast
by Ernest Hemingway
If I lived in the Paris of the 1920s and hung out with Hemingway’s circle, I might not have found life as romantic as it seems in this posthumous memoir. I love not only his prose, but his stories about Gertrude Stein, F. Scott Fitzgerald and others. To mingle in such a salon in this age of cyber relationships would be magical.
Lord of the Flies
by William Golding
I first read this novel when I was getting started as a reporter in 1979 and knew nothing about violence and crime. I vividly remember my shock at the stark depiction of the cruel and base nature of the children stranded on an uninhabited island. It’s a graphic reminder that bullying isn’t a modern dysfunction.