Genre: Thriller, forensics
Rating: 1.5 out of 5 stars
Comment: an utter letdown, worst book so far in the Kay Scarpetta series…
But wait, I do suspect a more subtle change, or an attempt to write a different sort of thriller over here!
In this installment, Cornwell attempts to use ‘remote horror’ as the theme… Actually ‘remote horror’ is a self-coined phrase, cuz I can’t think of the appropriate word to use to describe this form of horror. Too often have we read about serial killers, rapists, hate crimes, psychotic murderers and such… There has always been direct physical contact between the aggressor and the victim, the predator and the prey. However, in this novel, Cornwell succeeds in bringing out the sense of impending doom felt by the reader as they are preyed upon by an unknown stalker. Even when the identity of the stalker was revealed, there was NEVER any direct or physical contact between the stalker-cum-murderer and his newest victims.
In a way, her latest novel attempts to draw upon the horrors of psychological murder… where… a simple drawing of an eye etched into the paint of a car, a crude pencil drawing of the same eye on a piece of paper slotted under one’s window pane… and a mailbox bomb traps one into a psychological jail, made by the stalker…
Another specialty of this novel was the introduction of ‘trace evidence’, for which the novel has been named. The same trace evidence of chalky bits of cremated bones, covered with traces of aluminium spray painted with red, white and blue were found at the sites of two seemingly murders, one that of the slow mechanical asphyxiation of a teenage girl by her aggressor sitting on her back with her face down, and the other, where a construction site worker was run over by a tractor.
There was also a rather intriguing piece of evidence… three strands of black human hair, dyed black, and cut on both ends… okie people, try to guess where such hairs could come from?
As for character development in this book…. haiz… forget any development. Everyone, from Scarpetta, Lucy, Marino to Benton are stuck in a rut of their own! I hope the next book will be better!
