Scala Radio Book Club: Autopsy by Patricia Cornwell

In the Scala Radio Book Club on Thursday (25th November), Mark chatted to American, bestselling crime author, Patricia Cornwell with her brand-new novel Autopsy.

World-renowned forensic pathologist Kay Scarpetta and her husband Benton, a psychologist with the US Secret Service, have returned to Virginia. They are headquartered five miles from the Pentagon in a post-pandemic world that's been torn by civil and political unrest.

Just weeks into the job, Scarpetta is called to a railway track where a woman's body has been shockingly displayed, her throat cut down to the spine. But the trail of clues will lead Scarpetta back to her own neighbourhood.

At the same time, a catastrophe occurs in a top-secret lab in outer space, endangering the scientists aboard. Scarpetta is summoned to the White House to find out what happened. As she starts the new investigation, an apparent serial killer strikes again, this time dangerously close to home.

Mark was interested to know why Patricia decided to include the 2020 Pandemic in her novel. ‘Some novelists that we've talked to in the Book Club who are writing contemporary fiction, have set their novels right up to 2019 so that they can ignore the pandemic completely. Why did you want to include it in this book?’

‘Well, Scarpetta lives in the same world we do. In all my books, I've always reflected on what's going on around us at the time that I'm writing it - maybe that's the journalist in me. I mean, I'm still a diehard reporter, I can never get away from that because it taught me to go out and look for stories until they find you, and to ask questions because if you're curious, the world's a really interesting place.’

Mark said, ‘You've got a line in the book about the smell of an astronaut when they come back in from doing a spacewalk. Who told you about that?’

‘I've met a lot of astronauts. I know Jack Fisher who has been on the Space Station, and I talked to him a lot about this. Even when the Apollo crew went to the moon, they would talk about the scent of space, it clings to the fabric of the spacesuit and it's described in many different ways. Some say it smells like burnt gunpowder, some say it smells of sulphur. Jack Fisher the astronaut said it smells like pea soup. Are we smelling the Big Bang?’

Mark wanted to know how Patricia stays motivated to write novels when she’s already so successful. ‘You have been a bestselling writer for a long time. Now I suppose there’s nothing to prove, really. So where does the motivation to get up and write every day come from?’

‘Well, I think there is always something to prove. You know, I always say, ‘Dude, the best thing you can do is compete against yourself. I feel that I have gotten better over the years, I've changed a lot of what I've done and you sort of need to because the way people read changes, just like the way we watch television has changed. But I never want to lose the love of it.’

Mark asked, ‘Your fans have admired that grit and determination throughout your life. You've not been shy or reticent about speaking out on those issues you feel strongly about, whatever they may be. I wonder we're talking about a period of five years since you last wrote a Scarpetta book, how has your politics been affected by the last five years in the US?’

‘I think more than ever, I'm realising how desperately we need to come back towards a middle ground. The extremism in this country, the divisiveness is of great concern. A lot of it is sort of beneath the surface where it's not all that visible but it's brewing. So, I would like things to just get a little bit more normalised, there's a lot of agitation out there and it's not good for anybody.’