If you want to know what little people, GPS chips, snuff films, online gossip rags, veterinarians, dermatologists, CNN, a man who wears ladies Brooks Ariel running shoes, unscrupulous pet shop owners, Marilyn Monroe, and a woman whose last name is Bacardi have in common, this is the book for you. It's also a must read if you like 500-page murder mysteries (with a budding love affair thrown in) that take place and are neatly wrapped up primarily over the course of 1 to 2 days - and during a major holiday at that.

Somehow Patricia Cornwell manages to keep you a little interested and ultimately it all comes together if you can make it to the end. The plot is totally unbelievable (for example, Lucy can call up a lab several states away in the middle of the night on New Year's and fly crime scene samples to them to be analyzed and get the results back hours later), but it does make you wonder what makes Cornwell's mind tick.

It's not Cornwell's best Scarpetta book, but it's not her worst either. She tries to "redeem" one of the major supporting characters, but it didn't work for me. Why she ever wrote the character so he needed to be redeemed in the first place is inexplicable to me. I think she may have jumped the shark with this character.