It’s Dr. Kay Scarpetta’s birthday, and she’s about to head to Miami for a vacation with Benton Wesley, her FBI profiler husband, when she notices seven pennies on a wall behind their Cambridge house. Is this a kids’ game? If so, why are all of the coins dated 1981 and so shiny they could be newly minted? Her cellphone rings, and Detective Pete Marino tells her there’s been a homicide five minutes away. A high school music teacher has been shot with uncanny precision as he unloaded groceries from his car. No one has heard or seen a thing.
In this 22nd Scarpetta novel, the master forensic sleuth finds herself in the unsettling pursuit of a serial sniper who leaves no incriminating evidence except fragments of copper. The shots seem impossible, yet they are so perfect they cause instant death. The victims appear to have had nothing in common, and there is no pattern to indicate where the killer will strike next. First New Jersey, then Massachusetts, and then the murky depths off the coast of South Florida, where Scarpetta investigates a shipwreck, looking for answers that only she can discover and analyze. And it is there that she comes face to face with shocking evidence that implicates her techno genius niece, Lucy, Scarpetta’s own flesh and blood.
INTRIGUING PLOT, READABLE BUT SPOILED BY UNNECESSARY DETAILS! It’s Thursday, June 12, 2014 in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Dr Kay Scarpetta is physically still at home though her mind has already left for the Florida vacation she had planned along with her FBI profiler husband, Benton Wesley. She’s in a celebratory mood as it’s her birthday and didn’t quickly notice the bright copper coins that flashes like shards of aventurine glass on top of the old brick wall behind their house. Dr Scarpetta feels a chill at the edge of her thoughts. Is it someone…