Publishers Weekly
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

The uneven debut autobiography from crime novelist Cornwell (the Kay Scarpetta series) catalogs her rise to literary fame. Born in 1956 Miami, Cornwell endured a tumultuous early life: her father walked out on the family when she was five, and her mother grew erratic (an early anecdote details her burning Cornwell and her brothers’ possessions). As a young adult, Cornwell became determined to write novels, and she spent years working on manuscripts that were rejected before she sold her first book, the thriller Postmortem, to Scribner for $6,000 in 1989. The novel won an Edgar Award and introduced medical examiner Kay Scarpetta, who became the anchor of a bestselling series that made Cornwell a celebrity. After Cornwell’s profile rises, however, the memoir loses its footing. A section on her public crusade to identify Jack the Ripper in the early 2000s fails to address the critiques of her methods and conclusions in the press, and Cornwell name-drops to mostly minor effect, as when she reveals discussing O.J. Simpson’s guilt with Bill Clinton before the trial concluded. Though the memoir starts strong, readers unfamiliar with Cornwell’s fiction will find little here to grab onto, and even the author’s fans are likely to find it long-winded. Agent: Esther Newberg, CAA. (May)

Kirkus
Copyright © Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

The life of a hugely popular crime novelist has been full of outsized violations and blessings. With her blockbuster series featuring forensic medical examiner Kay Scarpetta finally making its way to the screen this spring in a series starring Nicole Kidman and Jamie Lee Curtis, Cornwell’s 43rd book tells the story behind it all. In an opening scene, Patsy’s mother, Miami-born Vivien Leigh-lookalike Marilyn Daniels, inexplicably burns all of her three young children’s clothing. Memoir mavens will recall a nearly identical moment in Mary Karr’sThe Liars’ Club (1995) and rightly suspect that another beautiful, deeply disturbed Southern mother is about to imprint her particular flavor of crazy on the formation of a literary mind. “She was always anticipating what might injure or kill us. Fires and carbon monoxide, floods, hurricanes, murderers, sexual predators, drug addicts.” Surely there would be no Patricia Cornwell without that. After chaotic early years with Patsy’s father in Florida, Marilyn bolted with the kids to Montreat, North Carolina, home of evangelist Billy Graham and his wife, Ruth, complete strangers with whom she seemed to consider leaving them. Amazingly, Ruth Graham reacted to this by finding a foster situation for the children and becoming a lifelong second mother to Patsy. Both Patsy’s early childhood and her years as a reporter were marked by incidents of sexual assault. The latter, a rape by a source, is flagged as fundamental to the disintegration of her marriage to Charlie Cornwell, a professor whom she fell in love with as an undergrad at Davidson College. Her interest in crime led her to pivot from journalism to a job with the chief medical examiner of Virginia, where she met the woman who would become the inspiration for her flagship character. Cornwell was surprised to realize after her first marriage broke up that she was bisexual; she has been married to her current partner, Staci Gruber, for over 20 years. There are plenty of boldface names in this excellent account of hard-won success, with candor about the failures as well as the wins. “I’d gone from nobody wanting what I wrote to being one of the best in the world as a crime novelist.” This literary memoir is as good as it gets, with more action and drama than many novels. Copyright © Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.