Patricia Cornwell: Book of the Dead

Genre:
Mystery - American, contemporary

Escape Experience:
You're brilliant, intense, successful and highly respected--albeit a loner. Your career is your life; your life is your career. You live a high-end lifestyle in the Deep South and stay in luxury accommodations atop the Spanish Steps in Rome (and you're wealthy enough to barely notice these things).

Read this if you're into...
Wearing Armani suits with a Breitling Navitimer watchthat you gave yourself on your last birthday, and you never go out without your iPhone.

Plot:
The murder of a Sharapova-esque tennis star in Rome begins the hunt for the "Sandman"--a serial killer with a penchant for replacing eyeballs with balls of sand.

Pace: Reading this is like walking in a pair of...
Cole Haan pumps, briskly and with purpose.

Cast of Characters:

• Dr. Kay Scarpetta - Beautiful, brainy, workaholic medical examiner who solves crimes while whipping up lavish meals in her gorgeous gourmet kitchen (and she gardens, too). Wrestles with her relationships with Benton Wesley (sustaining a romantic relationship while nurturing a career in over-drive) and Pete Marino (sustaining a close friendship while avoiding romantic entanglements).
• Lucy Farinelli - Scarpetta's bold and beautiful, impossibly brainy and high-achieving (of the Bill Gates variety), super athletic (of the Lara Croft variety), lesbian niece who zips around in a Ferrari and pilots her own jet and helicopter. To her, no computer is unhackable. Offspring of a neurotic, self-centered mom, Lucy harbors personal demons too complex to describe.
• Dr. Benton Wesley - Intense and driven, astute to the point of prescience, former FBI profiler and Scarpetta's long-time and long-distance lover. Viewed through Scarpetta's astigmatism, Wesley is often an enigma.
• Pete Marino - Middle-aged, chain-smoking, hard liquor-drinking, former cop and Scarpetta's bulldog of a side-kick. Tortured by an unrequited love for Scarpetta. Surrounded by over-achievers like Scarpetta, Lucy and Benton, ya gotta feel for Pete.

Books in the Scarpetta Series:

1. Postmortem
2. Body of Evidence
3. All That Remains
4. Cruel and Unusual
5. Body Farm
6. From Potter's Field
7. Cause of Death
8. Unnatural Exposure
9. Point of Origin
10. Black Notice
11. The Last Precinct
12. Blowfly
13. Trace
14. Predator
15. Book of the Dead
16. Scarpetta
17. The Scarpetta Factor
18. Port Mortuary 

Other authors you might like:

• Kathy Reichs - Deja Dead is the first book in the Temperance Brennan series.
• Sarah Lovett - Discover a Scarpetta-esque heroine in Dr. Sylvia Strange (Dante's Inferno).
• Linda Fairstein - Final Jeopardy is the first book in the Alexandra Cooper series.

Links:

• About the author - Official site; Wiki site
• About forensic science
• On location in Charleston, SC - Municipal site; Wiki site; tourism (Charleston CVB)
• On location in Rome, Italy - The Spanish Steps; Hotel Hassler 
• Cook like Kay - Scarpetta's Winter Table; Food to Die For: Secrets from Kay Scarpetta's Kitchen