Port Mortuary by Patricia Cornwell

In ten words or less: Was man alive when zipped into body bag? Scarpetta investigates.

Review: Kay Scarpetta's military ties complicate her life and career in the latest offering from Patricia Cornwell. After accepting a scholarship from the Air Force to finance her college and medical school education, Scarpetta found herself tangled in a case involving hate crimes against two Americans in South Africa. Twenty years later, she still has nightmares about the case, and is shocked when the mother of a young man her office has autopsied seems to be dredging up the old case, and accuses Scarpetta of racism.

Scarpetta has been at Dover Air Force base, running a fellowship program on CT-assisted virtual autopsies, when word reachers her from Massachusetts. At her forensic center in Cambridge, a young man who had dropped dead is found in his body bag, and there are indications that he was alive when he was zipped up. Did her office screw up, and why is her second-in-command missing?

Why bother? Cornwell interweaves a number of plots, from the present and the past, and Scarpetta doesn't know who to trust, including her husband and niece. The military mortuary at Dover lent an air of despair and urgency to the mystery.