The Body Farm

By Patricia Cornwell

Book Overview

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"The new audience will be compelled by the characters, crimes, and mysteries that are the trifecta of Patricia's masterful storytelling... and a warning......there WILL be BLOOD." - Jamie Lee Curtis

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - The gruesome murder of a young girl leads Dr. Kay Scarpetta on the hunt for an elusive serial killer in this "ingenious" (Washington Post Book World) thriller.

Eleven-year-old Emily Steiner is dead. She left a North Carolina church meeting late one October afternoon and strolled along a lakeside path toward her house two miles away. Who met her on the path? Who followed her home, kidnapped her from her bedroom, and left her body by the lake days later? It's a puzzling and terrifying crime, reminiscent of the work of serial killer Temple Gault, who has long eluded Dr. Kay Scarpetta and law enforcement for years.

Into this volatile atmosphere comes Scarpetta's ingenious, rebellious niece Lucy, an FBI intern with a promising future in Quantico's computer engineering facility--until she is accused of a shocking security violation. While coming to terms with Lucy, Kay must conduct a grisly forensic investigation at a clandestine research facility in Tennessee known as The Body Farm. There she will find more answers to Emily Steiner's murder--and evidence that paints a picture of a crime more horrifying than she ever imagined.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0425201449
• ISBN13: 9780425201442
• Release Date: December 2004
• Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
• Length: 400 Pages
• Weight: 0.57 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 4.2" x 7.6"
• Age Range: 18 years and up
• Grade Range: Grade 12 and higher

Customer Reviews

favorite author

i had all her books, slowly replacing n re reading some

Gruesome enough even for me!

Being the morbidly curious person that I am -- one would have to be, to be a police reporter -- I found Dr. Kay Scarpetta's travels to the Body Farm, a place where dead bodies are left in various stages of decay to help determine time of death, to be my favorite of her books! I also love all the trouble poor Lucy always seems to get herself into. Being a hopeless romantic, I love the sexual tension between Scarpetta and FBI agent Benton Wesley. The ending was torturously surprising, the killer an absolute shock. This is Cornwell at her best!

A book that keeps you on the edge of your seat.

This book is intense. It definitely keeps you on the edge of your seat. At one minute, you think you have it figured out then in the next you are not sure what is going on. Very Exciting book.

My first Cornwell book is not going to be my last!

I'm a younger reader and I love this book. It was the first book I read by Patricia Cornwell and I have read 3 more of her books. I love reading the medical thrillers. I can't read them fast enough.

Speedy, slick, scary crime thriller.

Dr Kay Scarpetta, Cornwell's recurring character in almost ten books, investigates the kidnap, rape, torture and murder of a little girl in North Carolina. Assisted by Pete Marino, homicide detective and Benton Wesley, criminal profiler with the FBI, she must find the killer before he/she strikes again. Her investigation seems to be getting nowhere, until she visits a strange science laboratory nicknamed The Body Farm. Look out for gruesome descriptive detail, a fast moving, exciting plot and a totally unexpected ending. This book is a great read, as are all of ornwell's books.