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5 Things You Must Know About Patricia Cornwall Books

Crime novelist Patricia Cornwell is best known for her series of books featuring her forensic pathologist character, Dr Kay Scarpetti. They were popular even before the current public obsession with forensic detective work. Her reputation has been enhanced by the number of crime writing awards, Patricia Cornwell books have won, including the Edgar Award and the Sherlock Award and Gold Dagger Award in the UK.  Cornwell has been very open about her medical problems. She suffered from anorexia and depression when she was young and has had substance abuse problems as an adult.

Cornwell was born in 1956 in Miami and graduated from college with an English degree. The detail and accuracy apparent in Patricia Cornwell books is borne from experience, starting with her job as a crime reporter for a newspaper in North Carolina. She then took a position in a crime lab in Virginia as a technical writer and computer analysist. Her writing career began with her first Scarpetti novel, Postmortem in 1990, a story about a serial killer, which was very well received. Another Scarpetti novel, From Potters Field, was made into a movie. Most of the novels are based in Richmond, Virginia.

In addition to crime writing, Cornwell has written a biography of Ruth Bell Graham, her friend and wife of evangelist, the Reverend Billy Graham. It was titled Ruth, A Portrait: the Story of Ruth Bell Graham and was published in 1983. A series of three police stories, featuring the character of Andy Brazil, have also appeared and these are much lighter in tone. Patricia Cornwell books are nothing if not versatile and she has also produced cookery books containing Italian recipes.

The feted writer has courted controversy in her long campaign to convince people that Walter Sickert was Jack the Ripper. She has spent a lot of her own money gathering items to support her case that the celebrated British artist was responsible for the murders committed by the Ripper, who was never caught, in Victorian London. This campaign has met with criticism and she put her theories into a book called Portrait of a Killer. Jack the Ripper: Case Closed. She even took the step of placing a full page advertisement in two British newspapers to answer her critics. Of all the Patricia Cornwell books, it is this one that has not been universally praised and a lot of her theory seems to depend on unsubstantiated evidence.