Leading from At Risk, Win finds himself investigating a cold case but there are two other plotlines going on to confuse matters. The whole effect is of a mishmash, including as usual some forensic science. It's disjointed and less than satisfying. The characters are still interesting and the whole thing does not take long to read but - school report - can do better!

Unlike the Scarpetta novels, this one about Win Garano is less intense but still has a lot going for it. Dealing with a cold case murder, the investigator also has to deal with his DA boss who herself is involved in all sorts of shenanigans. The characters are well-drawn and the plot moves along nice and quickly. At 191 pages, it does not take long to read and is satisfying nonetheless.

Chasing the Ripper by Patricia Cornwell is a disturbing book with great research. I gave it four stars.

I received a complimentary Kindle copy in an Amazon promotion. That did not change my opinion for this review.

Link to purchase: https://www.amazon.com/Chasing-Ripper-Kindle-Patricia-Cornwell-ebook/dp/B00PKOPENE

Book: Depraved Heart

Author: Patricia Cornwell

Genre: Fiction/Mystery

Summary: Dr. Kay Scarpetta is working a highly suspicious death scene in a historic home in Cambridge, Massachusetts, when an emergency alert sounds on her phone. A video link lands in her text messages, immediately begins playing...and it seems to be from her niece Lucy. But how can it be? It's clearly a surveillance film of Lucy taken almost twenty years ago. As Scarpetta watches she comes to grips with frightening secrets about her niece, whom she loves like a daughter. That first clip and others sent soon after raise dangerous implications that increasingly isolate Scarpetta and leave her confused, alarmed, and not knowing where to turn. She doesn't know whom she can tell - not her FBI agent husband, Benton Wesley, or her investigative partner, Pete Marino. Not even Lucy. Cornwell launched these unforgettable characters on an intensely psychological odyssey that includes the bizarre death of a Hollywood mogul's daughter, wreckage on the bottom of the sea in the Bermuda Triangle, a grisly gift left in the back of a crime scene truck, and videos from the past that threaten to destroy Scarpetta's entire world and everyone she loves. The diabolical presence and singularly "depraved heart" behind what unfolds seems obvious - but strangely, not to the FBI. Certainly that's the message they send when they start harassing Lucy and begin building a case that could send her to prison for the rest of her life. In the latest novel in her bestselling series featuring medical examiner, Dr. Kay Scarpetta, Cornwell captivates readers again with the jolting twists, high-wire tension, and cutting-edge forensic detail for which she is renowned, proving yet again why she is the world's number one bestselling crime writer. - Harper Collins, 2015. 

Am I the only one that found the plot way too convoluted? Taking an older murder from another state, sending the blood evidence to a lab in California and having this huge conspiracy about insider trading with a rape thrown in for no good reason that I could see. And I'm so jaded I thought the rape was [SPOILER actually a BDSM sexual encounter that was taken the wrong way (hide spoiler)].

I'm pretty sure this is my first time reading this author and I don't plan on picking up any of her other books anytime soon.