No.1 bestselling author Patricia Cornwell delivers the next enthralling thriller
in her high-stakes series starring Kay Scarpetta-a complex tale involving a ser
ial sniper who strikes chillingly close to the forensic sleuth herself.It's Dr.
Kay Scarpetta's birthday and she's about to head to Miami for a vacation with he
r FBI profiler husband Benton Wesley when she notices seven pennies on a wall be
hind their Cambridge house. Is this a kids' game? If so, why are all of the coin
s dated 1981 and so shiny it's as if they're newly minted? Her cellphone rings,
and Detective Pete Marino tells her there's been a homicide five minutes away.
A high school music teacher has been shot with shocking precision as he unload
ed groceries from his car. No one heard or saw a thing. It's as if God did it.In
this 22nd Scarpetta novel, the master forensic sleuth finds herself in the midd
le of a nightmarish pursuit of a serial sniper who seems to leave no evidence ex
cept fragments of copper.
The shots are so perfect, they cause instant death
and seem impossible, and the death scenes aren't crime scenes because the killer
was never within hundreds of yards of the victims. The victims seem to have not
hing in common, and there is no pattern that might indicate where the Copperhead
will strike next. First New Jersey, then Massachusetts, and then into the murky
depths off the coast of South Florida, where Scarpetta dives a shipwreck, looki
ng for answers that only she can discover and analyze.
There she must face an
unthinkable truth that points in the direction of her techno genius niece, Lucy
, Scarpetta's own flesh and blood.
