Dr Kay Scarpetta, chief medical examiner of the Commonwealth of Virginia, made her fictional debut in Patricia Cornwell’s first crime novel, Postmortem, published in 1990. Cornwell had been both a police reporter and a morgue assistant. And her character was inspired by a real medical examiner she worked with.
Postmortem won a slew of crime fiction awards, including an Edgar and the French Prix du Roman d’Aventure. It was a riveting read – if you surfed the questionable prose style. I applauded the arrival of a female forensic specialist.
