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.
Includes an exclusive excerpt from the riveting next novel in the Kay
Scarpetta series, DEPRAVED HEART.
--BBC (UK)
