50 pages • 1-hour read
Postmortem
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Background
Authorial Context: Patricia Cornwell
Patricia Cornwell is a best-selling American crime novelist best known for her Kay Scarpetta series, of which Postmortem (1990) is the first entry. Cornwell was born in Miami, Florida, in 1956. Her father was a leading appellate lawyer, and despite their tense relationship, this contributed to her early interest in crime and the law. In 1961, after her father abandoned the family, evangelist Billy Graham’s wife, Ruth Bell Graham, arranged for Cornwell and her sisters to be taken in by a family in Montreat, North Carolina. Ruth encouraged Cornwell’s writing talents, and in 1979, Cornwell began to work as a crime reporter for The Charlotte Observer. She won an award for her investigative crime reporting from the North Carolina Press Association in 1980. Her experience in this role is the inspiration for the tenacious fictional crime reporter Abby Turnbull in the Kay Scarpetta series.
In 1985, Cornwell got a job at the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner of Virginia as a technical writer and computer analyst. Cornwell worked there for six years, and her experience as a computer analyst informs the detailed description of technical processes in Postmortem. During this time, Cornwell became friendly with Dr. Marcella Farinelli Fierro, a medical examiner and forensic pathologist in Richmond, Virginia. Dr. Fierro is considered a pioneer in her field and is one of the first women to earn qualifications in forensic pathology in the United States. Dr. Fierro was appointed chief medical examiner of Virginia in 1994, and she is the inspiration for the character of Dr. Kay Scarpetta. Since the success of the Kay Scarpetta series, Cornwell has used her wealth to support forensics education through funding projects like the “Scarpetta House,” a model home for crime scene training used by the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner in Baltimore.
Series Context: The Kay Scarpetta series
Postmortem is the first novel in the best-selling Kay Scarpetta crime series, which, as of 2025, spans 29 books. This debut novel introduces recurring characters and themes that continue throughout the long-running franchise. In addition to the main investigator Kay Scarpetta herself, Detective Marino, Scarpetta’s sister Dorothy, her niece Lucy Farinelli, and FBI criminal profiler Benton Wesley are all mainstays of the series. As Lucy grows up, her role in the series expands and grows more complex. Many of the books are primarily set in Richmond, Virginia.
Like Postmortem, the series overwhelmingly focuses on the details of forensic analysis through the lens of Kay Scarpetta’s investigation. The forensic science is largely realistic, although, as seen in Postmortem, Scarpetta is more actively involved in investigations than a real medical examiner would be. Similarly, most of the books in the series end with Scarpetta and Marino in a violent and dramatic confrontation with the killer, often resulting in the killer’s death. Many, although not all, of the works in the series deal with the theme of Misogyny and Violence Against Women, both as experienced by Scarpetta and in violent crimes against women. The ongoing theme of The Psychology of Serial Killers is often explored in the books through Scarpetta’s interactions with criminal profiler Benton Wesley, with whom she has an affair in later books.
The Kay Scarpetta series is cited as an inspiration for television shows focused on forensic science, like CSI and Silent Witness. In 2026, Amazon released a streaming television series, Scarpetta, based on the book series, with Nicole Kidman starring as Dr. Kay Scarpetta and Bobby Cannavale as Detective Pete Marino.
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