Predator

I read books in order.  The thing that I love about series is that you get to see the characters grow.  It gives the author a chance to gradually develop their personalities.  Another thing about series is that story lines can branch off in very different directions over the course of several books.  Finally, villains can pop in and out leaving the reader unsure about their fates.

I am reading the Kay Scarpetta series in order.  Patricia Cornwell is doing everything I want in a series.  Scarpetta is changing over the course of the books.  Her relationships with Marino, Wesley, and Lucy are expanding and contracting as in real life and the quirky villains are in and out like restless children.  I love that.  Who is going to re-emerge next?

Predator is the 15th book in this series.  Publisher's Weekly some interesting comments about it.

"It's not often a crime novel offers such a smorgasbord of oddball elements, including autopsy advice, methods of combating tree blight, the use of spiders in sadomasochist torture and couples covering the sexual and psychological waterfronts. There's even a little nasty fun at the expense of television psychoanalysts."

But, are these characters growing or shriveling?  Publisher's Weekly goes on 

 "Her Dr. Kay Scarpetta is all snarky professional reserve and personal insecurity. Self-loathing lesbian niece Lucy, sounds properly troublesome and troubled, with an added catch in the throat due to a secret she's keeping. Pete Marino, the bullet-headed, gym rat security chief of the Lucy-originated National Forensic Academy, sounds so gruff and aggressive, he should be kept on a chain leash. And Scarpetta's inamorato, Benton Wesley, whose study of mass murderers' brain patterns gives the novel its title, is, as his name suggests, the very model of a dry, annoyingly passive-aggressive personality. The joke here-intended or not-is that the novel's protagonists are almost as mentally or emotionally disturbed as its homicidal villains."

This isn't my favorite of the series.  In fact, I started to give it up at several points.  I like to have some clues leading to the identity of the "bad guy."  In this book, the big reveal comes out of nowhere.  I didn't see hints leading to the conclusion.  It was almost too neat or something.  

The one thing I am looking forward to is seeing Dr. Self again.  She is a real doozy of a character.  Too good to just drop.

 These quotes from Publisher's Weekly appear on the Amazon page for Predator.  Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. 

Footnote:  I want to make sure that I give credit for using snippets of that review.  It validates my opinion of the book but the words belong to the review.