This is the first book in author Patricia Cornwell’s Kay Scarpetta series. Scarpetta is a female medical examiner. Cornwell wrote this in 1990, when she was working in the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner in Richmond, Virginia. There really hadn’t been much written at the time regarding forensics, and especially not a qualified female medical examiner. Cornwell was truly blazing a path here.

In Richmond, Virginia a series of rapes and murders has the population on edge. Kay Scarpetta is the coroner on the case, and she’s frustrated at the inability to do anything to stop the bodies from coming to the morgue. Not content to leave it to the police to investigate, Scarpetta begins some investigations of her own on the side. This puts her and her family in the path of a killer.

This was in the days before we knew much about what went on in a forensics investigation. There were no shows like CSI, so much of the information about what Scarpetta does was brand-new. Terms that are familiar to those of us who have seen forensic crime television shows were unknown to the reading public at the time. I liked that it didn’t feel like Cornwell dumbed it down for the audience. The terms are there, and for the most part, are either explained through the story or easy to decipher in the context.

The mystery itself wasn’t too surprising. I suspected who the killer was early on, and it turned out to be right. Still, as one of the first books of its kind, Postmortem was groundbreaking and great in its historical context. There are no cell phones to keep in communication while on the road, and the use of computers in aiding criminal investigations was in its infancy. It’s sort of like the early Bosch books by Michael Connelly in that regard, except there’s more science here.

Kay Scarpetta also faces a bias in her profession that isn’t there as much any longer. It can be hard nowadays to see a female medical investigator as ground-breaking, but it was at the time. Still, Kay is up against “the old boys club” much of the time, despite all of her knowledge and accreditations. It’s interesting in a historical context to see how far we’ve come in terms of women being in these positions, but also with the technology. We sometimes take it for granted what’s available to us.

I recommend Postmortem as a place to start the series. I’m curious now to see where Scarpetta will go and will follow the series. It’s got much more depth to it than some of the silly female mysteries out there. It’s not quite a light summer read, but a serious mystery that I enjoyed reading.

Next book in the series: