This is a Kay Scarpetta novel but is quite enjoyable on its own.
Dr. Kay Scarpetta has returned to Virginia to retake her former position as chief medical examiner. But it’s not long before she realizes that her unsufferable new boss will be a person she trained, and who has politics at the heart of every interaction he’s involved with.
But Dr. Scarpetta cannot worry about that as she is called to the scene of a gruesome murder – one that has links to her own exclusive historic neighborhood. But her job doesn’t get any easier as she is also called to the White House to remotely try and figure out what happened on a top-secret space mission.
Amazingly she finds links between that crime in space, and her local murder victim. She also reopens the investigation on yet another female victim, whose case had been essentially shoved under the rug by her new boss. As she investigates that case, Scarpetta realizes she might be dealing with a serial killer!
This is gripping and hard to put down. My only complaint is that all the threads seemed to wrap up very quickly and conveniently in the last 10 pages.