THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc. DATE: Thursday, July 18, 1996 TAG: 9607180011 SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL TYPE: Book Review SOURCE: BY PEGGY DEANS EARLE, SPECIAL TO THE DAILY BREAK LENGTH: 115 lines
SHE'S BACK, she's perfect and she's fighting evil in our very own backyard.
Kay Scarpetta, Virginia Chief Medical Examiner and alter-ego of Richmond author Patricia Cornwell, goes to her office in Norfolk and dives for bodies on the Portsmouth side of the Elizabeth River. She gets harassed by Chesapeake Police officers and investigates a militia-like cult in Suffolk.
Then, back at the Sandbridge beach house she temporarily calls home, she cooks gourmet dinners from scratch (she even bakes the bread).
When everything is sauced and garnished to Italian perfection, does our hero wolf down her well-deserved meal? No, thank you - not much of an appetite. Perfect.
``Cause of Death'' (Putnam, $25.95), the seventh in the wildly successful Kay Scarpetta mystery series, is a grabber at the start. Cornwell's great gift for compelling beginnings is topped only by her expert and well-researched details of crime scenes and autopsies.
Her descriptions of the latest developments in evidence analysis, forensic medicine and technology are an education at the very least.
Her research gets a bit sloppy on local geography, however: There's no High Street in Chesapeake, for one thing.
But the real problem with ``Cause of Death'' goes beyond the occasional goof. As with many of Cornwell's other Scarpetta odysseys, something happens about midway through the book - plot, character development and plausibility just sort of, well, decompose.
Our Tidewater-based story (Cornwell ignores the official ``Hampton Roads'') begins when the body of Ted Eddings, a Richmond-based Associated Press reporter, is discovered in the Elizabeth River.
Local police shrug it off as a diving accident. But Kay, who's been filling in for her Hampton Roads counterpart while he's out of the country, knows better.
She's so sure Eddings is a victim of foul play that she dons the wetsuit and diving gear conveniently stashed in the trunk of her black Mercedes and, on a freezing December day, risks her life by plunging into the icy, polluted water.
She's certain she'll discover that the reporter - one of the few she's ever liked - is a victim of homicide.
Sure enough, during the autopsy, Kay smells the bitter almond odor of cyanide - conclusive proof of premeditated murder.
As it happens, it's New Year's Eve and Kay has a guest in Sandbridge. Her niece Lucy, a 23-year-old computer-genius FBI agent, has recently finished a course in robotics at MIT. And while studying at the University of Virginia, she may have been ``the only non-physics major to take a course in nuclear design for fun.''
Apparently, perfection runs in the family.
Cornwell fans will remember how Kay virtually raised Lucy because her mother, Kay's sister, was neglectful and just plain rotten. To complicate matters, Lucy's lover, Janet, is having problems with her parents' inability to accept their daughter's sexual orientation.
Kay is perfectly tolerant, of course, though homosexuality is ``still new to me, and in some ways scary.''
Anyway, Lucy will once again have a chance to prove herself indispensable to the resolution of the mystery and the salvation of the day.
Police Capt. Pete Marino is back on the scene, too. He has driven down from Richmond to help with the case, since he and Kay are consultants for the FBI's criminal profiling unit, which ``specialized in assisting police with unusually heinous and difficult deaths.''
Marino, rampant double negatives and all, is still the perfect sidekick - a flawed, gruff, lovable lug who tries hard to protect Kay from danger, as if Miss Perfect needed that.
Marino's surrender to most of his gluttonous bodily cravings provides dramatic contrast to the ascetic, perfect Kay, who orders breakfasts of scrambled egg whites, dry toast and black coffee. Perfection, it appears, requires little sustenance.
But back to the story. Marino's search of Eddings' Richmond apartment uncovers a virtual arsenal of sophisticated weapons, a ``survivalist map'' and a copy of the ``Book of Hand.''
This proves to be the bible of a fascistic cult known as the New Zionists, whose leader, Joel Hand, and headquarters both reside in Suffolk. What these things are doing in Eddings' home and the master plan of the cult are just two of the many mysteries solved in a progressively frenetic sequence of events.
The unravelling of these may cause whiplash to readers who care about motives, explanations and feasibility. Suffice it to say that nuclear weapons, North Korea and Libya all factor into the denouement.
Cornwell ignores opportunities to delve into the psychology of her villains, whom she usually caricatures as being, simply, evil.
Considering that Kay is supposed to be a criminal-profiling expert in addition to her other talents, it's odd she never shares these profiles. Readers learn almost nothing about Joel Hand or any of his fanatical followers.
Physical descriptions, even of the novel's stars, are cursory at best. We are told only that Lucy is ``beautiful in a sharp-featured, strong way'' Benton Wesley, Kay's former lover and unit chief of FBI's Criminal Investigative Analysis program, is ``handsome with prematurely white hair.'' And poor old Marino has a pot-belly.
We know nothing about Kay's appearance. Her rare instances of imperfection include lighting up her first cigarette in three years after one of her assistants is assassinated (she was tense, after all). After one drag, she stubs it out - whew!
Then, when Kay and Wesley just happen to find themselves in a London flat together, they give in to their lust in a brief, strikingly sterile scene. Wesley is separated from his wife - she was cheating on him, so his sex with Kay is OK.
But if we know anything about Kay, it is that she's tough! As tough or tougher than any man. Witness the following:
When arguing with an abusive Chesapeake Police detective, she (pointedly) remarks: ``I spoke with just enough edge to let him know I could be sharp.''
Later, as she prepares to enter a life-threatening situation, she observes that ``Wesley was grim and Marino looked miserable. I understood the way they felt, but I knew what must be done.''
Then, in the thick of it, she says, ``I showed no emotion because I had accepted this was the day I would die, and I was not afraid.''
Ah yes, perfect right to the end.
Right. ILLUSTRATION: Color photo
``Death'' is the seventh in Cornwell's hot Kay Scarpetta mystery
series. by CNB