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"Autopsy", published on Tuesday, is Cornwell's
25th Scarpetta novel, a series she started in 1990 with
"Postmortem".
Cornwell believed she had finished Scarpetta's story with 2016's
"Chaos" but when the world went into lockdown last year, she
began to wonder what the fictional forensic pathologist would
make of it all.
"I started thinking, what would Scarpetta say about all this?
What would she do with this universe we live in now? ...Because
it's not the same one that it was when I quit doing this five
years ago," the author said.
"Autopsy" takes Scarpetta back to where she started - Virginia -
where she works as chief medical examiner and is confronted with
a grueling murder case and a potential crime in outer space, a
situation that Cornwell thoroughly researched.
"The way I describe it is absolutely accurate. I have an
astronaut who lived up on the space station and I worked with
him on talking about what fluids do up there. How would you
handle this? I mean, how does NASA deal?" she said.
Cornwell's research took her to places most people would never
get to visit, including the Secret Service headquarters in
Washington and the White House.
Despite having thought she was done with writing, Cornwell said
she is already penning Scarpetta’s next story, a tough murder
trial.
"She's taken five years away and it's like she sent me back to
graduate school. She said, 'You know what? Go hang out at NASA.
Go hang out with smart people. Go learn something new. You're
driving me nuts'."
(Reporting by Mindy Burrows; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)
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