At Risk

Another Patricia Cornwell appears, and it's a pretty safe bet that At Risk will storm its way to the top of the best-selling charts. Cornwell has been at the top of the American crime writing tree for so long now that her position is virtually unassailable--even when she produces the odd misfire (which he has been known to do). Fortunately, At Risk can be counted among her successes, though its brevity may disappoint some.

The book is based on a recent story of the same name serialised in The New York Times, but those hoping for the return of Cornwell's resourceful forensic specialist Dr Kay Scarpetta will have to wait a little longer, as Cornwell introduces a new central character in this book. Having inhabited the mind of a female protagonist for so long, the author has felt the need to move into very different territory with a charismatic male police investigator at the centre of the narrative. The book takes the reader from the cool climes of Cambridge, Massachusetts to the overbearing heat of Knoxville Tennessee. Win Garano is handed a tricky assignment: he is to investigate a murder case that is over two decades old. District Attorney Monique Lamont isn't concerned about the difficulties of the case, though--she simply wants results for personal reasons. Win is convinced that he has been saddled with a very low priority case, but quickly finds that there is much more to this twenty-year-old mystery than he thought. As some very dangerous secrets are uncovered, Win finds himself dealing with both the consequences of his investigation and the remarkable ambitiousness of Monique Lamont as he pursues a political grand prize. In the past, when Cornwell has moved away from the safe territory of the Kay Scarpetta novels, she has slightly alienated her dedicated fan base. But she is absolutely right to take chances like this in order to freshen her literary inspiration, and this fast-moving piece is a laudable effort, even if it comes in at a rather shortish page count. --Barry Forshaw

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worst book I have read in a long time - Rated
having enjoyed cornwells early books, I recently picked this up looking forward to a good read. I was so utterly disapointed after reading this, there is no depth to it, I wondered what i had read after finishing it and was so disgusted with it that i left it on the train for some poor unfortunate reader to pick up! I will never buy one of her books again, she has totally lost her power to write a good enthralling novel/page turner...

total boring rubbish - Rated
i cannot believe patricia cornwell wrote this pile of rubbish, i was gutted and felt ripped off for paying £9.99 for this book, her other books are so gripping i thought this would be too, dont waste your money or time on this book, sorry but its that awful

This book is a waste of money! - Rated
I can't believe how bad this book is. I bought it because I enjoyed all of Patricia Cornwell's other crime fiction. This book was very different - it was weakly written, the story was boring and the end explanation just happened without any build up. Does any reader really care about the story here? I cannot fathom why a writer of Cornwell's reputation would put her name to such poor quality work. If only I had read the Amazon reviews, I'd never have wasted time reading this book.

Disappointing and Over-Rated - Rated
The book begins with a beguiling opening sentence, but I soon lost interest in the story. The unsympathetic characters soon gave way to stereotype. Nearly everyone is a hard-bitten, career-focused meglamaniac. None more so than the female police protagonist, who gets raped then pulls herself together remarkably quickly and gives a cohorent press conference within a few hours vowing to champion good against evil with her new crime fighting unit. How many rape victims manage to do this in real life? Not many, I bet. Ms Cornwell needs to do a reality-check and speak to some traumatised rape victims then she would have a clearer idea what she is writing about. Needless to say, the author lost me at this point, and the only character I found at all engaging was the grandmother. I found it impossible to relate to the other characters and the short length of this book made for a skimpy read. People read fiction because they want to relate to characters who have strengths and frailties. Ms Cornwell's characters are completely devoid of the latter.

Well, I liked it...sort of... - Rated
Patricia Cornwell's Kay Scarpetta series has always been one of my favourite series of books and so I thought I'd give this stand-alone novel a try (especially at it's 1p price-tag, thanks to Amazon!). Although not at the highest quality of Cornwell's usual standards, 'At Risk' is a fairly good read with a number of good plot twists and plenty of action that kept me interested. At just 240 pages, (where the writing is also quite large) it is easy to to fly through and finish this book in no time at all.

A few things let this book down with generally unlikeable characters, a bit of a far-fetched storyline and not enough characterisations to make you really care what was going to happen. Maybe if Cornwell brings back Win and Skyes she may reveal a bit more about their backgrounds, but in 'At Risk' I really didn't care about them at all.

After reading nothing but negative reviews, I was pleasantly surprised that it wasn't actually that bad after all. Like I said, not Cornwell's best, but if it was written by a lesser-known author this probably wouldn't have been given the public slating that it has been given. Worth a read if you've read all the Kay Scarpetta and Andy Brazil books and want something else from Cornwell.