This is in many ways the best of the recent Scarpetta novels, boasting an involving story and some fine writing. Booklist on Flesh and BloodDr. Kay Scarpetta is about to head to Miami for a vacation when she notices seven pennies on a wall behind their home. Is this a kids game? If so, why are all of the coins dated 1981 and so shiny they could be newly minted? Then she learns there s been a homicide five minutes away. A high school teacher was shot with uncanny precision as he unloaded groceries from his car. Yet no one heard or saw a thing.Soon more victims surface. The shots seem impossible to achieve, yet they are so perfect they cause death in an instant. There is no pattern to indicate where the killer will strike next. First it was New Jersey, then Massachusetts, and then the murky depths off the coast. There she comes face-to-face with shocking news that implicates her niece, Lucy Scarpetta s own flesh and blood. Cornwell has created a character so real, so compelling, so driven that this reader has to remind herself regularly that Scarpetta is just a product of an author s imagination. USA Today Cornwell s instincts are dead-on. Chicago Sun Times"