Cornwell is on the case

Patricia Cornwell

In trying times, one doesn't instinctively turn to Patricia Cornwell. Optimism doesn't tend to hang out much among serial killers and murdered women.

But the multimillionaire creator of forensic pathologist Kay Scarpetta is adamant her new novel, Scarpetta, is intended to cheer everybody up. 'It's a celebratory book and it couldn't come at a better time; people are pretty gloomy these days,' she says.

'It's been nearly 20 years since Postmortem [her debut novel, published in 1990] and I owed it to Scarpetta to honour her life.'

Like many authors, Cornwell sometimes talks about her literary creation as if she is real. There's no doubt Scarpetta's stomach-turning encounters with mutilated bodies have caught the imagination of millions – an avenging angel with a scalpel devoted to fighting evil who could have come straight from George W Bush's dreams if Cornwell hadn't recently switched allegiance to the Democrats.

Tracking people through cyberspace is a massive challenge. Everyone can be a victim. This time, though, fans will be relieved to know that Scarpetta is moving on from the shock attempted rape that ended last novel Book Of The Dead and is now married to psychologist Benton Wesley. 'People have said for years that they wish she could be happy,' she says.

'Thing is, people aren't happy in crime fiction. But I had her make this commitment because I wanted this book to be all about her.' There's certainly a warmer tone to the 16th Scarpetta novel – not least since the pathologist has abandoned the morgue for the better-heated environs of a psychiatry ward where a murder suspect called Oscar Bane insists on confiding only in her.

It also tackles one of Cornwall's favourite subjects – cyber crime – as Scarpetta, newly a TV personality, becomes the target of attacks on a gossip website.
'There's no way I can write about modern crime and not talk about the net,' says Cornwell, who prides herself on bringing a documentary precision to her heavily researched subjects. 'Tracking people through cyberspace is a massive challenge. Everyone can be a victim: I've been stalked on the net. You don't know what you're dealing with.'

This new criminal twilight also brought new challenges to Cornwell the novelist: previously, her books had inhabited a moral world where good and bad are as rigidly distinguishable as black and white. Now danger and fear can lurk anywhere, inside the home and out. 'Yes!' she agrees. 'There's an increasing emphasis on spying on people in the US, for example, with the Patriot Act. People aren't sure what's real.
The net breeds this ambiguity, and this is embodied in Oscar Bane – is he a crackpot, a killer or is someone really doing something awful to him?'

Cornwell's own life is often described as being as turbulent as her fiction. A lesbian affair with a married FBI agent became headline news in 1996 when the husband was charged with the attempted murder of his wife. She also spent a fortune defending her theory that Walter Sickert was Jack the Ripper – and took out newspaper ads denying she was obsessed.

Three years ago, however, she married her girlfriend. It can be no coincidence that Scarpetta is also married: does she consider the character her alter ego? 'Not really,' Cornwell responds. 'Actually, she's created me as much as I've created her. If you spend your time following criminal investigations, then you have to ponder weighty subjects and that changes you.'

So what next for Scarpetta? 'I'm going to take things in a whole new direction,' she says. 'It got pretty stark in my last few books; even I'm tired of it.'

Scarpetta (Kay Scarpetta) is out now.