Blow Fly

by Patricia Cornwell

After her resignation as Virginia's Chief Medical Examiner and the horrifying events which threatened her life in The Last Precinct, Kay Scarpetta has abandoned her elegant home in blow fly, which sometimes lays eggs on corpses.) But her past will not let her rest, and her grief for Benton Wesley continues to grow, not diminish, as does the rage within Lucy, her niece. Then the architect of her changed fortunes contacts her from his cell on death row: deformed, blinded by Scarpetta's own actions, incarcerated in Texas' strongest prison, Jean-Baptiste Chandonne still has the ability to terrify. But, unknown to Scarpetta, there are other forces behind the wolfman's apparent actions, invisibly shepherding her and those closest to her towards eliminating those who threaten them all. It is all orchestrated by the one man in her life who knows every nuance of her soul. In Szczecin, Poland, Lucy and a colleague apparently commit a premeditated murder, using blow-fly larvae to alter the perceived time of death. The novel then ends with the killing of four further people by Scarpetta's associates.