True Crime: A Memoir by Patricia CornwellMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
Thank you to Grand Central Publishing via NetGalley for providing me with an advanced copy of this book in exchange for my honest review!
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Patricia Cornwell is best known for her international bestselling thriller series about forensic pathologist Dr. Kay Scarpetta. Every story comes from somewhere, and Scarpetta's began when Patricia Cornwell embedded herself in a morgue.
In this achingly honest memoir, Cornwell excavates her own life, detailing her traumatic childhood being raised by neglectful parents, her father abandoning the young family on Christmas day, her mother being institutionalized twice, an abusive foster family, and developing a parental relationship with evangelist Billy Graham’s wife Ruth. Cornwell depicts a harrowing hospitalization and near-death car accident. She unflinchingly shares overcoming obstacles that later gave her the ambition to become an award-winning police reporter. From there it was research in a medical examiner’s office that would turn into a full-time job. She would become a forensic expert and worldwide publishing phenomenon.
Cornwell leaves no stone unturned in this deeply candid account of her life, offering inspiring insight into what made her into the international sensation she is today.
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Patricia Cornwell is a masterful storyteller, and because she writes her most well-known character Dr. Kay Scarpetta so well, I think it would be easy to conflate the two women. I went into this book realizing very quickly that I knew very little about Cornwell, and I appreciated her candor as she related details about her life. There were parts of her story that were difficult to read, and I found myself feeling great sadness for the child that she once was, as well as great admiration for the woman she has become. However, I also recognized in her some of the scars that her past have inflicted on her, and I appreciated that she was willing to let that come through in her writing.
She relayed the story of a life that began in poverty and then one day included time spent in the friendship of politicians and celebrities. She shared false starts and redirections in her career path before she came to the point when she developed the character for which she is so well-known and began the series of books that would become her legacy. She discussed frankly her history of trauma and the effects it had on her family and later on her romantic relationships. The flow of the book was sometimes a little clunky, but the material easily held my interest, especially in later chapters as we learned more about how her career as an author unfolded. Her dedication to accuracy in her novels and the research that goes into them is evident to anyone who reads them, and learning about the lengths she goes to in order to achieve this was fascinating. And although I know that she is not Scarpetta, I did recognize the parts of herself that she has injected into the character, and I enjoyed also reading about some of the inspirations she has had for other characters in her books. At the end of this memoir, I remain a big fan of the Scarpetta books, and I have a new appreciation for their author, the inimitable Patricia Cornwell.
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