Patricia Cornwell scares me too much

I read them all at first, eagerly following Kay Scarpetta and Lucy and their big, very modern adventures. Then I read one called ‘Blowfly’ that made me uneasy. It just oozed darkness and though it had all the ingredients it didn’t taste right.

Now I have beside me ‘The Book of the Dead’. The first chapter describes a young girl held captive by some monstrous pervert. It’s because Patricia Cornwell (PC hereafter) writes so well that my skin started to creep by page three. At the end of the chapter I logged on to Xomba instead for some more wholesome leisure.

PC champions the good and the brave, crimebusters of all persuasions. Yet this chapter one has a kind of pornographic feel. It’s deliberately, skilfully, prurient and obscene. Of course Kay and Lucy are going to zoom in and save the reader from the monster and the nastier he is, the greater the relief will be. But there’s still something unsettling about it that I can’t pin down. The lurking evil was there in the earlier books, but the descriptions never made my stomach churn. It’s more horror than detective novel or thriller. I just don’t know what to think of it. I don’t know whether I want to know what happens next. One thing’s for sure. It’s not bedtime reading.