Reviews with content warning for Medical content - Blinder Passagier

Reviews tagging 'Medical content'

Blinder Passagier by Patricia Cornwell

2 reviews

entrancedbywords's review against another edition

dark mysterious medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

0.5

Apparently this book is part of a series, which i didnt know at the time of buying.
I've owned a copy of Black Notice for a short while and finally got around to reading it.

The minute I started reading it struggled to get into it.

I doubt this was its intention but it reads very YA. The over descriptions. I don't need to know the details of someone getting ready to have a shower or what soap they use. I don't need to know what draws they go into to find their undies. I don't need a break down of crime scene items (e.g this name brand torch perfect to find blood, urine and poo. I connected it too this cord that's connected to that.. )

The book feels quite sexist. The FMC thinks "they judge me cause I'm the only woman who can do this crime scene job" or im not like other girls mentality. She's supposed to be what.. 30..40 years old and she reads as a highschooler. Bruh..no.

I got 49 pages in and aboustely hated it. But I forced myself to read the book.

I get that i don't know cop talk/rules but woah..almost two pages of talking about being undercover, names, details and your witness/victim being undercover. I thought all that was supposed to be hush hush that not even your own mother knew you were undercover and here's two UCs blowing their whole covering in the front yard of their aunts house. 🤦‍♀️

Also..i get certain countries are notoriously known for being drug zones BUT my God.. where some of those remarks aboustely needed about those places? That kinda felt a bit problematic.

I'm sorry what!? Since when do MEs take pieces of a dead body to a tattoo artist and say "identify this for me." The fk!? Isn't there rules about that!?

And the assumption that those with tattoos are drug addicts or criminals! 🤦‍♀️ I get this book was released in the late 90s but fk me. That stereotype is so bad.

The biggest thing I don't understand how this book is why is an ME playing cop and doing all the heavy lifting? There's a throw away line that says "i was a cop than a lawyer and now a medical examiner" doesnt it takes time to be one, let alone three. Look, i get it im not in the law field but like..I highly doubt a Chief medical examiner would go cross country to solve a case especially one that 99% takes place in her local area.

Content Warnings

pokecol's review against another edition

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dark mysterious medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

2.75

Black Notice is, uh, strange. I think I'd call it predominantly a 'good' book but it has a lot of faults, some are less significant and only really acted as little hills in the road of the first 3/4 of the book, but the last quarter was far worse.
I don't think I'd say the last quarter is all bad, per se, I have fairly physical reactions when revoltion compels me from bad writing, but there were only a few occasions I had to step back on this one.

To begin, lets talk about the positives. The set-up and direction of the novel is really good. Even though this is the 10th book in a series and I read it stand-alone, it does very well in manifesting narrative self-contained.
The introduction to the story goes over the death of 'Benton' a fair number of times illustrating what is likely a key event in the last book. It got a little overbearing but this frame of reference in tandem with Kay Scarpetta's introduction and Marino's as well, did very good at putting the core details of the figures we need to know on the stage to analyse.
I hate Americanisms in general, and there was a helping of that in the beginning but it quickly faded out for the other content, so for this I am grateful.
We also get introduced to an absolute SLEW of other cast in the novel, but Patricia does a good job of keeping us on track as a reader. I will say, I don't feel she did very good in diversifying their voices and speech - their idiosyncrasies more of less faded into nothing - but she did a very good job of introducing people in certain events at certain times, making the names distinct, realistic and palpable and reinforced the usage of certain people at the right times to frame them better in image among the cast. This may have just been a byproduct of the older books, and in part a fluke of writing in the 10th novel, because it is a pretty magnificent feat, especially given that this would probably not be intended for an audience beyond the series at this point. However, if Patricia Cornwell really considered readers coming into the book for the first time as a standalone read, and managed to categorise such an enormous cast so thoroughly with that intent, you can consider me impressed.

What else, in the positives? Something I really like is the progressivism. I am rather shocked actually at the way this was handled; a 1999 novel that doesn't tackle homosexuality but treats it as a matter of the world and realism, and not gay either: Lesbian.
Marino, a character most prominent besides the titular Kay Scarpetta has a strong shock of traditionalist right-way views in him, but the lens is a far removed framing. He is willing to be homophobic in presentation, and yet Jo and Lucy, a Lesbian couple in Scarpetta's Niece and her partner, are treated as just a normal thing. It does come up in discussion a fair bit because in the time of the world it was not so easily accepted, sure, but the book itself does not tackle it on any occasion where the world doesn't effectively rendering it as acceptable in writing ethos. Which is awesome to see, because it lets the decision just live as it is.
And later on in the book, as the more minute factors of establishing social dynamics begin to dissipate, Lesbianism in the cast exist in a progressive frame of presence that beats out even most LGBTQIA+ media of the 2020s, which is insane to me. I do not mean that it is a stand-out representation and a bastion of fighting for LGBTQIA+ presented characters, no, rather, I am shocked in that it goes past that. Where the component of them as a character contains their role as LGBTQIA+ involved, is able to address it and even still make it irrelevant because its treated (in narrative) as normal like being of a different ethnic background, race, or heritage is. And I think that's especially cool.
Kay speaking with Jo's parents is an especially good scene because the tone conveys that all know the relationship their daughter is in, by a fashion, but do not consider that the point to address when thrown against the rather horrific choices Lucy made that landed her in hospital.
Additionally, and this one really surprised me, the two primary antagonists from the start of the book come up near the end in a pretty awful a scenario, and Marino, the American conservative that he likely is, makes reference to the fact that Anderson was likely pursuing Diane Bray sexually without it being any factor of ridicule. In fact, the way it is proposed, Bray is sexually coercing anyone as either Bi or Pan, and Anderson being on the side of that similarly being either Lesbian or Bi is not mentioned at all, but passed by, accepted, and then talked beyond in the fact Bray was likely performing such sexual coercion on her. Where Marino addresses this, free of stigma, is just surprising. In honest critique I am not sure if that is something he would actually do, the end of the book started to get strange (I'll get to that), but at least in reading this was a standout good moment to me because it illustrated Marino as in the mind of the job and detective work, where his experience with Lucy and Jo meant he had, probably unconsciously, accepted that such sexualities are a thing, and even came to the idea that Anderson might've been interested in Bray without it being a thing to fuss over. And if it was intended that way, again, really really cool.

I also liked the way the novel built up its mystery and initial pace. As a reader there is a lot to get a grasp on in the early stages of the novel and we are really brought into the mystery of the first killing by the Loup-Garou and the new change in staff hierarchy through all law enforcement because of Bray. The growing strength of the mystery is great in Chuck: and the whole portion of the book involving Rose (Kay's secretary) was excellent. Learning about the fact Scarpetta had been directly undermined by a big social coup was very exciting to learn about and the way it was built up and used was supremely believable - especially because characters like Rose, and others who respected Scarpetta, would so easily swing around when she explained herself. They were all hesitant to believe Scarpetta had been doing the weird things (the redirecting calls ask, and the forum responses), but clearly the delicate balance of manipulating others into thinking these things while Kay was in distress over Benton had been very carefully managed. So when it instantly starts falling down and the whole event of things start to open up it makes sense and really lends itself to the engagement with story.
I think this was so good actually, that it set me up with higher expectations than I should have had for the rest of the story. Because there ended up being a lot of drip-fed bits of information that I do not feel were very well paid-off by the conclusion - especially the dark car tracing Rose and Kay, which is I guess supposed to have just been Anderson if the last reveal is to be believed. And a lot of the actual minutiae of manipulating the position Scarpetta held, as well as Marino, felt a lot more trite after a time, as if it were more luck and brute force which were headed towards trying to get her reassigned/fired. Which kind of sucks because the whole build and crumble throughout the start of the book was an exhilarating read, and made me far more invested than I could have expected to be in a novel series' tenth installation.

Now this is where we start to go into the negatives.
I should say, the above factors really are strong positives, I enjoyed the book enough that I feel I have a more optimistic view of the story overall, but of course in critique my mind is methodical with problems in order to analyse and learn. And though the majority of issues only portend to the last quarter the rest is not exempt from hiccups.

Lets start with the biggest issue for me. Not in the narrative, but outside of it in the editing.
The editing is not as good as I'd like, and for what are, honestly, TINY hurdles in production, with massive consequences.
First are a few spelling errors. There are a couple of times characters say things like "you was" instead of you were, and "must of" instead of must have. Now this can be chalked up to their peculiarities, but it did not feel consistent, especially with Marino, who was otherwise as articulate as everyone else. My guess is that for Marino it was supposed to illustrate his lack of control over speech when he got angry, but it was never really framed that way and just felt clumsy.
And the "must of" I find unforgivable, because 'must of' and 'must have' sound identical in fast speech unless someone is especially articulate. Meaning that the only reason to choose the writing here is if you get it plain incorrect. Could it have been because someone was articulate enough and got it wrong? Well, no, because the people are supposed to medical, learned, and informed, police crime scene examiners who are - if articulate enough - not able to make a mistake like that. And if they are it just feels slopping in dialogue writing.
The second problem, and this is the big one, the real issue, and the factor I am building towards more than otherwise would be necessary because of the impact it leaves: there are no scene spacing gaps.
Allow me to elaborate.
Many novels will break paragraphs in the way this review is written, each piece addresses the needed context of the moment and scene. However, when there is a large shift text will often have a gap

like this ^ to show that we've moved drastically from the last subject/scene. Or they'll do something like
--X--
this ^ in order to space the paragraph, indicating that we've stopped the last subject and moved onto the next, but it isn't a big enough change to be a new chapter just yet. Most often this is a tool employed when we move to the next day or change POV.
In Black Notice, there is nothing. And this is a bad thing because very often, there are huge leaps in the moment to moment, that fully lose you as a reader on what is happening. It took me many chapters to even figure out what it was that I was missing, but when I did it felt horrendously sloppy.
I could read what felt like a knee-deep portion of an investigation and the next paragraph is suddenly somewhere completely different at a different time and you won't even realise to begin with because there has been nothing to indicate a change, so you continue reading as if it is still part of the events occuring just a moment ago, making you completely lost, THEN you realise you're elsewhere when a different place/event/location is mentioned and you have to retroactively figure things for the change that wasn't proffered to the reader AT ALL.
There are a few especially nasty occasions of this where tone changes completely, what is happening shifts in fashions that destroy the sense of emotion from a moment ago, and in the conclusion of the story in the last few pages, makes it feel like utterly stupid writing and an insult to the flow of tension.

Now that was the biggest issue, but its not part of the story itself, that is something to do with the publishing, somewhere in the production of the writing or editing process, and that means its likely a permanent issue with Patricia Cornwell's works, which is irritating to know.
The following are all narrative issues, as per a normal review, and there are certainly some big problems here in their own merits.
It is hard to know where to begin as always, so there is likely to be some cross-referencing as items of issue return to mind.

Let's start with the crime itself, we learn of a fellow who has been killed somehow in a crate that has arrived at a shoreline in the USA. We are given lots of unique pieces of information and then the narrative shifts off of the case entirely as we start to learn of the issues within and without the precinct. The focus of the novel then entirely becomes about the stint from Bray, Anderson and Chuck in trying to affect her career, and the case is more or less dropped from focus entirely. Then about half way through the book a second murder occurs and all focus on the career part of the story is dropped instead, switching gears completely.
Then later, we randomly get this information from France and Marino & Scarpetta just instantly fly out of country get involved with some totally ancillary information. --As an aside I truly don't know if this is normal in how quickly things like this might instigate international travel for jobs revolving around Interpol, but in the book it felt ludicrously fast and out of nowhere.
We then come back to the USA all of a sudden with only limited real new narrative points in play and rush towards a conclusion.
I will say, Diane Bray's death was a big surprise to me, took me very off-guard.
But really this is where a lot of the problem with the mystery itself is. We're given a crap load of information, and I really mean a ton.
The book is so utterly entrenched in medico-lingo and legal speak that it is very offputting. I'm not sure what motivates Patricia Cornwell's choice of language in these subjects, it could very well be in trying to illustrate Kay Scarpetta's dense knowledge of the subjects, or it could be some kind of background pride in knowing such medical jargon where it applies. The thing is, in both cases, it could easily be minimised. The book is bloated to the BRIM with medical dialogue in way that is utterly detrimental to the narrative. I can piece together some parts, as everybody has their own medical experiences in life, and for sure one or two pieces of nomenclature will apply to you - but as Kay examines each scene with a medical eye she goes into the exact biology to stupid extremes where you more or less cannot understand a majority of the language.
I am not sure whether or not explaining such language would be better or not either, it would make the book even longer and more tedious that is for sure. And generally I feel, never having figured a good majority of this nomenclature did not impact my understanding of the core narrative at all, and believe it could be easily removed. It added some flavour of authenticity to the story in the latter portions but at the beginning it just felt like a really daft barrier to entry for enjoying a murder mystery. Or in a worst case scenario like Patricia was tooting her own horn, because it really does come in in swathes.
To such a point, as a brief aside, this happens with more than just medical content, this happens with car names, clothing brand names, weaponry, and a lot of stuff that is arbitrarily given their proper names as oppose to something more nebulous, effectively doing the opposite of drawing narrative in than is maybe intended.
Now the reason I do this whole aside on language during an analysis of the plot is for this one reason: there is a lot of information, but none of it is relevant. All of the mystery is unsolvable, and we basically learn as we progress towards the end that the modus operandi of the antagonist/killer is rage, lacking a motive pattern beyond the emotional and all instigating factors exists beyond the country in a tiny part of the story that basically hands what is happening to Kay and Marino without their intellect doing any of the work.
And that's sadly my biggest problem with the book as a 'murder mystery' for all the analysis, and even in getting new core pieces of intelligence on the case at hand, Kay and Marino never themselves resolve the questions. Even if they get really close, and get really interesting new pieces of information such as the tattoo, someone else always tells them with more or less a connection as a reader there isn't a way we could have followed to the logical conclusion. Which is pretty disappointing. The severity of this increases as the book goes on too, as nearer the end the mess of pacing and direction make it so a lot of things have to happen fast. And we get a lot of information about the killer and Kay and Marino continue to investigate and learn a lot, but also kind of just learn nothing.

I'll briefly go over the conclusion now because it ties very importantly into everything I've mentioned above so far, then I'll go back to other subjects of issue.
The conclusion of the book is basically after the two protagonists return from France. They hear about Diane Bray's death, examine, interrogate Anderson (sort of), examine the body (sort of), wander around, Kay returns home.
Then the Loup-Garou comes to kill Kay, and we get a weird scenario of him being taken down by I guess chance.
First, we go over a very annoying - as above - scene skip that feels weird with analysing Bray's body. For so prominent of a character there is barely any reflection on the fact she is dead, and in the morgue we get that Kay has looked over her and then get one of the dumb paragraph jumps to her going to a hardware store that she deus ex tools into being part of her childhood or something and picks up a specific type of hammer that was likely used to kill Bray - which means absolutely nothing because there is no pursuit towards catching the killer narratively at all.
Rather, at this point in the book there are less than 10 pages left. The whole time I was just thinking, how exactly are we going to wrap this up? From 50 pages left to 4 pages left it kept feeling like the book was just continuing, like, no abrupt stop or anything, just as if there should be another 10 chapters or so after what I was reading, but there was not. So it become extremely self-evident the killer would come for Kay to kill her, and the results would speak for themselves there.
Kay goes home, someone tries to break into her house and the alarm goes off. Okay. She gets the police to come over, they find the garage door pried up. Okay. The police say they are going to keep on patrol of the area, especially with the news of Bray's death very near and very very recent. So clearly there needs to be a more specific and intellectual conclusion, because if the alarm went off, police hang around and Kay is on edge, there is no reason for the criminal to make a second attempt to come in the home at this point - they'd just be caught for absolute certain.
But no, the narrative goes quickly to dumb town. Patricia still writes well enough its portrayed in a way that doesn't feel juvenile but without her language this would be truly one of the dumbest scenes I've read in a while.
There is a knock at the door, that, from the second the knock happens, is obvious to the reader that this is the murderer/Loup-Garou. Every person has talked about answering a door in the middle of the night, it has been reinforced the whole back-half of the book. Kay was extremely antsy about who she answered to and was completely guarded. But for no reason, the dude outside just saying "I'm a police officer", even after Kay responded that she didn't ask the police to come by again, is enough for her to just wanton open the door on the same night basically that the investigation into Bray's murder had happened.
Very very very unsurprisingly, she is attack by the Loup-Garou! Oh no! She panics, and for no real reason escapes any initial attack or whatever he was doing, throws the skin piece in a jar with the fomalin in it by complete chance at the attacker, burning him. And then they all rush out into the snow while Kay breaks her arm.
--And mind you, all characters had been intended to come around to Kay's house basically this evening. Lucy and Jo were coming to return. Marino was insistant on driving over to her place, but for no reason Kay kept denying him on this clearly problematic night, and for additionally no reason, Marino for the first time ever listened to her. Police were on patrol nearby, and apparently according to Marino Talley - a character from France - had flown over to the USA right now for no reason and was nearby.
The Loup-Garou chases Kay outside, and at the exact same time, all the police converge suddenly out of nowhere, being alerted by nothing at all to this happening, and should have been present before, enough to stop anyone getting to the door.
Lucy and Jo pull up to Kay's doorstep and immediately are there to resolve the situation, Lucy prepares to shoot if she needs to. Though it doesn't even matter because the climax was resolved immediately when Kay threw the formalin jar, because supposedly the burning sensation was enough to permanently incapacitate the Loup-Garou from further combat as he spends the final pages following that just rolling in the snow, so other people rocking up to save her wasn't even necessary.
Then we get a really confusing change of events, because as mentioned above Patricia Cornwell does not space scenes in any noticeable way. Talley from France is suddenly there, the situation is resolved, something happened to the Loup-Garou off-page? and the book is over. All in not even half a page.
What?
I won't even dig into this further I have other things to go over, but this was such a total mess, and it just felt like the whole investigation was pointless. The motive and actions of the murderer were pointless. Arrival timing was trite but also unnecessary. And also for no reason the Loup-Garou could get to the door. Also managed to stop by panicked chance, also Kay being wreckless in answering the door now, for the first time, for no reason whatsoever.
Just, good lord.

Now lets talk about characters. Big problems here. Marino and Kay have fairly strong presences, and above I mentioned that Patricia Cornwell did a very good job of diversifying the nature of all this big cast over the duration of the book.
This is partly true, but it comes with a giant fault. Patricia cannot write distinct voices for characters at all. Everyone is very specific with their words, somewhat analytical and brash, and all of them do this power play kind of talk where they either have control or get upset from not having control, nearly, literally, 100% of the time.
So while the distinct names operations and places of characters was done well, there are effectively only like 6 characters in the book, Marino and Kay. The police. The antagonist police. Rose. And the people in France. That's it. Because they all basically operate the same and so many people get names that don't need them at all.
This is really annoying because the mannerisms of characters mean that none of them have any actionable identity, and the reason this is bad is because some characters that should be so very different from one another are so very samey.
And the reason that that is even worse, is because Kay, who absolutely resents a character like Chuck, also decides to have a fling sexual encounter with a person who is basically identical to Chuck in behaviour but is supposed to be some very different kind of person.
This part really peeved me actually. Because Talley, the character in France, is a random person who Kay meets for less than 24 hours. She is clearly distressed, keeps thinking about Benton, has a horrible distance from anyone and thinks only the worst of them, attributes the meeting with this Talley dude to him being an egotist, stuck-up, and far too above his head for being so young. Then out of nowhere at all, they have sex - absolutely nothing instigated it. I don't know if this is some kind of behaviour pattern from Kay in the earlier books but as a first time reader this felt unreasonably out of nowhere. And, again, Talley, this young hothead is almost identical in writing to Chuck, and even Kay has similar resentful feelings in the thought dialogue.
Mind you, Kay is still extremely torn up about her past partner/lover, Benton, because he was a paragon in many ways for her and she has specifically not gotten near others in the need to focus on work and avoid emotion. So the entire engagement with Talley feels out of character - but what makes it worse is immediately after sex, they shower together??, and the book makes reference to how they wash each others hair as if they had been long time sexual/romantic partners who do "cute" things like this together all the time, but they have been together for less than a day. And there is no way in hell Kay would feel okay getting anywhere near that close to anyone for years to come.
THEN THEY ALSO GO ON A DATE????? Like it just keeps getting worse. Then it explodes in their faces and they switch back to confrontational like their first meeting out of nowhere and leave. Then Kay comes back from France.
???????????? What?
Following such, Kay keeps thinking about Talley like some lost important family, and 'feels bad' about ditching him or whatever, and I just lose all respect for her as a character. Like, what is happening?
Marino apparently is jealous also, and he is reduced to wanting to have Kay for himself or something but its not really addressed. He basically turns into a moron and gets pissed off at this, which I mean rightfully so, what the hell is Kay Scarpetta doing. But they just treat the whole scenario like Marino would 'always do this' or something? And Kay is in the right...? I don't know, this is such a hard swing from competent character writing it makes it hard to really even digest and analyse.
Annoyingly in France this is basically the only plot point that ends up mattering because all the information is just fluff that pads a mystery we're barely attending to.
Then Talley shows up at the end of the book out of nowhere to be Kay's new replacement rebound lover for no reason in order for her to stagnate as a character after Benton's death and keep the series going.
Just, holy flipping hell.

And annoyingly, any real action and protest from Marino and the value of words is lost. The value of most people's spoken words start to become lost as the minutiae of what is said continues to be ignored by every other cast member in nearly all conversations. Its like every single word is water sliding off a board except maybe one or two sentences per the conclusion of conversation that may or may not register.
This is especially appalling with Marino who listens to nothing, and Kay who never hears what he says either. They both argue a lot but no head way is ever made on either end at all, and its frustrating to read. Because the characters get angry a lot, but nothing comes of it narratively.
Narratively, emotion is the most corner-stoned aspect to running dialogue because the tension exists in the exact microcosm of strength that the emotions carry in a scene. If a character gets angry, and is thoroughly invested in something, and no characters or the story in general, listens to them at all - it means their anger and words are worth nothing.
This happens so often, we get these explosive fights where it feels like characters true directions boil to the surface at last and say what they really mean as if we are reaching some final confrontation where the other people will understand at last - but really, after all is said and done nothing changes at all. And the same kind of fully angry conversation happens again a few chapters later. Its infuriating.
I don't think I've ever actually seen a 'talking to a brick wall' properly manifest in anyway before.
In simile, its as though you ask for no onions on a hotdog, get onions on a hotdog, explain you don't like or want onions then continue to get them anyway. Then when you get onions one too many times, you get pissed, have a fight don't pay, and think FINALLY this'll resolve it. Then you buy a hotdog again and you still have onions, and nothing has changed. But in Black Notice, this happens repeated, the fight to stop the onions happens over and over and over and over, but the onions are NEVER taken off the hot dog. People do not learn from the fights, which is a heinous minimisation of dialogue usage in narrative. Making both; characters, feel meaningless in conflict because their words and actions to do not produce results. And writing, feels meaningless because any instigated conflict in the story leads to nothing and just takes up page time whilst being actively unenjoyable to read.
It makes me absolutely stunned that Marino and Kay are friends, because they do not listen to each other at all ever. Even in their best interest, even when they know better, even when it is evidently long-term better for the others sake, they just do not listen to each other.

There are other problems too.

Another more annoying one is the 'two things happening at once' thing, that authors like to do. Sometimes this is a really strong narrative device, and in things like live-action television works a treat in portraying contrast and dichotomy. In novels it is a huge challenge, because breaking each and every single line with two interchanging conversations/events makes it really hard to digest. This happens a number of times in Black Notice and it never works well.

The name of the book Black Notice is kind of dumb. It holds no strong meaning. It is revealed sometime in the last quarter when Kay is in France that a Black Notice is basically an unidentified victim/killer or something. But we only learn about it in the back-end of the book, doesn't really apply to what we're going over but in the loosest literal informational sense, and is one among many bits of fluff in France that doesn't lend to the story at all. And all other things that have happened so far, especially the details about Kay's internal problems with her work, have absolutely nothing to do with the thematic matter of the book.

The whole Lucy and Jo conflict is stupid. I like Lucy and Jo as characters and a narrative direction for change in Kay's relationship with family but the actual conflict that occurred is ridiculous.
Lucy tells her story about how in the raid gone wrong she tries to pretend she isn't with Jo, and in illustrating to the enemy she was against Jo beats her - but it gets so stupidly extreme its untenable. In no world can I believe that if a person had truly loved their partner so thoroughly assuming they were going to die, that they would turn to sexually abusing and beating them in making an image. A true 'What the fuck?' moment. The more detail it went into the more I just felt gross and could not believe this as a writing choice, there are so many other ways to have done this scene and this was the decision, the one that actively would not happen and is the least okay to write.
It also doesn't make sense with the fact Lucy is clearly a trigger-happy self-important person. Chances would have been she dies, but if Patricia Cornwell really did not wish to write that, there were a hell of a lot of better ways to draw this character conflict than ripping her shirt open for cartel to find sexual gratification in and beat her. Like I truly don't get how anyone could ever make that choice when you're both about to die, the final act you think you'd be doing in a chance gambit to survive isn't go straight into shoot out, its let these scumbags see your partner's nude body by your own active actions while you beat them as they look at you with only forgiveness in their eyes.
I truly can't. It doesn't even make me sick, because its so totally unbelievable as a thing that would happen I just look at the scene with exclusively upset, mildly angry, confusion.

Every other issues is mostly minor. And the balance with the positives is in there.
As said above, I did enjoy the book more than I didn't enjoy the book, but clearly, there are some big issues.
The actual narrative flow and intrigue from the start to the middle was really good and as a ground-level dig into inner workings of Kay's office while trying to juggle work and emotion, I think the book did a stellar job. But it runs far off the rails by the end and its already trying to run so many competing story lines that whenever some old piece crops up it is usually unwelcome in trying to mete out narrative satisfaction across the story.
The book also wraps so abruptly that it doesn't really even feel like a conclusive ending, nothing feels finished.

I think this is a case where I'd really have to read more of Patricia Cornwell's works in order to properly assess my feelings on her as a writer. She clearly has enough talent that what she does have in value extends beyond single capacity for novelisation, meaning there are many idiosyncrasies of her work that I assume have by chance managed to be absent in Black Notice.
But at the same time, I don't feel any deep compulsion to pursue more of her work, she has illustrated enough problems in her writing in tandem with her positives that I believe the most of what I could get in something like Kay Scarpetta is very much over and done with.
I did enjoy the opening 3/4 of Black Notice, but the end was bad. I don't know if it was enough to retroactively ruin the book for me. It doesn't feel like it, but it certainly would not be re-readable, the fact that so many points of information lead nowhere would make it almost feel like an entirely pointless side-path beyond the intended narrative. That said the detours were the best part, so perhaps the absence of connection to what was a ruddy-ended mystery is what made Black Notice good, at least to begin with.

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