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Patricia Cornwell

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Patricia Cornwell (born Patricia Carroll Daniels on June 9, 1956) is a contemporary American author. Cornwell is widely known for writing a popular series of crime novels, featuring the fictional heroine "Dr. Kay Scarpetta", a medical examiner.

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Biographical information

A descendant of Harriet Beecher Stowe, Cornwell was born in Miami, Florida. At age four, her father walked out on Christmas Day. "He could be very cruel. He wasn't even nice to me on his deathbed. He grabbed my brother's hand and mouthed, 'I love you,' but he never touched me. All he did was write on a legal pad, 'How's work?'" she said in The Times. A year later, she testified in a lewdness case against a local security guard. Cornwell, who may have bipolar disorder and admits to taking a "mood stabiliser," as a teenager suffered from depression and anorexia. Shortly after graduating from Davidson College, she married her English Professor Dr. Charles Cornwell, 17 years her senior. Dr. Cornwell left his tenured professorship to become a preacher, and Patricia began writing a biography of Billy Graham's wife. They divorced shortly afterward, after Cornwell had cheated on Charles with FBI forensics instructor Margo Bennett in 1991 and 1992. Cornwell and her ex-husband at present are on good terms.

Cornwell has made several notable charitable acts, including funding scholarships to the University of Tennessee's National Forensics Academy, Davidson College's Creative Writing Program, and donating her collection of Walter Sickert paintings to Harvard University.

In 1990 Cornwell crashed her Mercedes-Benz and went to a treatment center for driving drunk.

In 1996 Eugene Bennett, a former FBI agent, cornered his wife Margo at a church after learning that she had had an affair with Cornwell, threatening to kill the minister. Margo shot her husband, who was sentenced to twenty-three years in prison. In 2005 Cornwell disclosed in an interview that she is in a "stable long-term relationship" with a woman, but said she no longer speaks to Margo "because there are toxic people in one's life whom one needs to cut out."

Cornwell accepts responsibility for her poor behavioral choices, but says that some things lie beyond her control without help. "My wiring’s not perfect and there are ways that you can stabilise that. I have certain things that run in my own ancestry. It’s not unusual for great artistic people to have bipolar disorder, for example."

Her writing

The Scarpetta novels include a great deal of detail on forensics. The solution to the mystery usually is found in the forensic investigation of the murder victim's corpse, although Scarpetta does considerably more field investigation and confrontation with suspects than real-life medical examiners. The novels are considered to have influenced the development of popular TV series on forensics, both fictional, such as , and documentaries, such as Cold Case Squad. 

Procedural details are part of the allure of her novels. Cornwell herself worked at a crime lab in Virginia as a technical writer and computer analyst but not in any official medical or forensics capacity. Her attempts to portray herself as an expert in those fields have caused some bad feelings from those who have actual training and licensing, including Kathy Reichs, who is both a board-certified forensic anthropologist and a crime novelist.


Other significant themes in the Scarpetta novels include health in general; individual safety and security; food; and family. Although scenes from the novels take place in a variety of locations around the U.S. and (less commonly) internationally, the city of Richmond, Virginia is featured prominently.


Besides the Scarpetta novels, Cornwell has written three more light-hearted police fictions featuring Andy Brazil, as well as a number of works of non-fiction.


Cornwell is the recipient of numerous prizes for crime writing, including the Edgar, Britain's Gold Dagger Award and the Sherlock Award. [] 



Controversies



Jack the Ripper


Cornwell has been involved in a continuing, self-financed search for evidence to support her theory that painter Walter Sickert was Jack the Ripper. She wrote Portrait of a Killer: Jack the Ripper - Case Closed, which was published in 2002 to much controversy, especially within the British art world, where Sickert's work is admired, and also among Ripperologists, who criticize her methods and conclusions. See Portrait of a Killer for further information. However, Cornwell denies a Jack the Ripper obsession in full-page ads in two British newspapers. [link]

Litigation surrounding The Last Precinct


Dr. Leslie Sachs, author of The Virginia Ghost Murders (1998), claimed to see similarities between his novel and Cornwell's novel The Last Precinct. In 2000 he sent letters to Cornwell's publisher, started a page on the World Wide Web, and placed stickers on his novel in order to claim that Cornwell was committing plagiarism. Cornwell successfully obtained a preliminary injunction against Sachs. The court ruled that his claims were baseless, and he was prevented from placing the stickers on his book. The court also required that booksellers remove the stickers that were already there and shut his website down for false advertising. [link].


Sachs left the country so that he could escape the injunction. He continues to charge that Cornwell plagiarized his work and used her influence to subvert justice.



List of works


Note: these are Scarpetta novels unless otherwise noted.





References



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