Tavia Chalcraft wrote:
PS The repetition of food in Patricia Cornwell is almost certainly (IMO) coincidental, everything in those novels repeats, as one realises if one reads several of them back to back.
Exactly. But what turned me off the series is that Scarpetta is the most blatant Mary Sue I've ever run across in professionally published fiction. She the world's best County Medical Officer (or whatever her title is), fine. She is always under attack by evil, incompetent, politically maneuvering opponents who resent her, whom she invariably outwits. Okay, part of the genre.
But.
She's also an ex-lawyer, and was top of the line at that, um, okay. She used to work with the FBI and CIA as an expert on terrorist psychology. hmm. She's an expert scuba diver and used to give lessons in it. She's a pilot. She has super-refined taste on home decorating and cars and clothes and possessions of all sorts. Despite the overwhelming hours she puts in (leaving her with no time to devote to them) she is involved in a long term relationship with a top FBI guy who is insane about her AND she has a long-term would-be lover/friend in a local police chief.
The last straw for me came about 1/3 of the way into the book about the drowned scuba diver. She goes out to an underwater crime scene late one wintery afternoon, bravely overcomes some male chauvinist piggery from police/navy divers, dives down to recover the body, immediately perceives it was murder and educates the others on why. Then she goes home, only to suffer an intruder/surveillance attempt on her home.
And then she sets out to make lasagna for her niece and the police chief and maybe some others, all the while thinking smugly about how SOME women would use these events as an excuse to call things off, or need comfort, or even stoop to ordering in...but not her! *She* would *never* offer her guests anything less than a gourmet delight constructed with her own two hands from her own special recipe....
Ptui.
Susan Beth (susanbeth33@mindspring.com)