Cornwell, Patricia (1956-…), is an American author of detective fiction who created the character Dr. Kay Scarpetta, medical examiner for the state of Virginia. Cornwell drew on her experiences as a police reporter and computer analyst for a medical examiner’s office to create Scarpetta. She includes authentic details of autopsies and other medical procedures in her novels.
Cornwell introduced Scarpetta in Postmortem (1990), which won several awards as the best first mystery novel of the year. The “Scarpetta” novels soon became best sellers. The series includes Body of Evidence (1991), All That Remains (1992), Cruel & Unusual (1993), The Body Farm (1994), From Potter’s Field (1995), Cause of Death (1996), Unnatural Exposure (1997), Point of Origin (1998), Black Notice (1999), The Last Precinct (2000), Blow Fly (2003), Trace (2004), Predator (2005), Book of the Dead (2007), Scarpetta (2008), The Scarpetta Factor (2009), Point Mortuary (2010), Red Mist (2011), The Bone Bed (2012), Dust (2013), Flesh and Blood (2014), Depraved Heart (2015), Chaos (2016), Autopsy (2021), Livid (2022), and Unnatural Death (2023).
Patricia Daniels Cornwell was born on June 9, 1956, in Miami, Florida. She lives in Richmond, Virginia, the scene of the Scarpetta novels. Her first book was a biography of Ruth Graham, the wife of evangelist Billy Graham, A Time for Remembering (1983). She also wrote three novels about a former North Carolina police chief named Judy Hammer—Hornet’s Nest (1997), Southern Cross (1999), and Isle of Dogs (2001). Cornwell wrote the nonfiction book Portrait of a Killer (2002), a study of the Jack the Ripper murders in London in 1888. Cornwell claimed the English painter Walter Sickert was the killer, but most critics found the identification unconvincing.
