Book of the Dead is a 2007 crime novel written by Patricia Cornwell

Patricia Cornwell

Patricia Cornwell is a contemporary American crime writer. She is widely known for writing a popular series of novels featuring the heroine Dr. Kay Scarpetta, a medical examiner.-Early life:...

. It is the 15th book in the popular Kay Scarpetta

Kay Scarpetta

Kay Scarpetta is a fictional character and protagonist in a series of crime novels written by Patricia Cornwell. The character is based on former Virginia Chief Medical Examiner Marcella Fierro, MD. The series is noted for the use of recent forensic technology in Scarpetta's investigations.-...

 series and the fourth novel consecutively in the series to be written in third-person omniscient style, rather than Cornwell's traditional first-person narrative.

Characters

• Dr Kay Scarpetta
  Kay Scarpetta
  Kay Scarpetta is a fictional character and protagonist in a series of crime novels written by Patricia Cornwell. The character is based on former Virginia Chief Medical Examiner Marcella Fierro, MD. The series is noted for the use of recent forensic technology in Scarpetta's investigations.-...
  
  
• Benton Wesley – FBI profiler. "He was FBI right down to his Florsheim shoes, a sharp featured man with prematurely silver hair suggesting a mellow disposition that wasn't there. He was lean and hard and looked like a trial lawyer in his precisely tailored khaki suit and blue silk paisley-printed tie. I couldn't recall ever seeing him in a shirt that wasn't white and lightly starched. He had a master's degree in psychology and had been a high school principal in Dallas before enlisting in the Bureau, where he worked first as a field agent, then undercover in fingering members of the Mafia, before ending up where he'd started, in a sense."
• Lucy Farinelli – Kay's ten-year-old niece. Described as being, "a genius, an impossible little holy terror of enigmatic Latin descent whose father died when she was small. She had no one but my only sister, Dorothy, who was too caught up in writing children's books to worry much about her flesh-and-blood daughter."
• Pete Marino – Detective Sergeant in the Richmond Police Department. Described as "pushing fifty, with a face life had chewed on, and long wisps of greying hair parted low on one side and combed over his balding pate. At least six feet tall, he was bay-windowed from decades of bourbon or beer."
• Rose – Scarpetta's secretary

Reception

Cornwell's Scarpetta series has been criticised for being repetitive and morbid by some critics. Reviewers have stated that many of Cornwell's recent books have contained 'shallow' and 'overused' characters. Others have praised the series for the unique plots in the series and Cornwell's characterisation of Scarpetta.