![\"Patricia](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/Patricia-Cornwell_Patrick-Ecclesine.webp.webp\"\/)
<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
Cornwell\u2019s new book finds her long-time protagonist, Kay Scarpetta, on the hunt for a serial killer in NoVA. <\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t\tBy \t\t\t\t\t\t\tOctober 10, 2025 at 9:05 am<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\tShare<\/p>\n Just when you think Patricia Cornwell<\/a> has written her last book about crime-solving medical examiner Kay Scarpetta, she pens another one. The bestselling author has sold a staggering 100 million books, and in her latest novel, Sharp Force \u2014 the 29th installment in the Scarpetta series \u2014 the character is once again on the trail of a serial killer. And this time around, the victims are in Northern Virginia.\u00a0<\/p>\n Your new book finds your longtime protagonist Kay Scarpetta running around Northern Virginia.<\/p>\n It\u2019s a cool part of the world. The traffic is paralyzing, to say the least, but there\u2019s so many fascinating places in Northern Virginia.<\/p>\n Is that why you decided on NoVA for much of the book\u2019s setting?<\/p>\n I tried to imagine, where would [Scarpetta] be? Because when I wrote the last one, she was living in Massachusetts. And I thought, \u2018You know, I think it\u2019s time she goes back to Virginia.\u2019 That\u2019s where it all started, but I didn\u2019t want to move her back to Richmond. And Northern Virginia made more sense because I was doing research with the Secret Service and \u2026 there\u2019s just so much that\u2019s up there in terms of having a very big stage. And Alexandria, particularly Old Town, is just charming and beautiful.<\/p>\n Did you spend a lot of time in the area doing research?\u00a0<\/p>\n Whenever I go up that way, especially to Washington, I explore so that I can see some of these places through Scarpetta\u2019s eyes.<\/p>\n Why did you choose Old Town as a setting for the book?<\/p>\n Old Town in particular is fun. It\u2019s fun to walk around there. It\u2019s fun to imagine Scarpetta having a headquarters. Of course, her headquarters is completely fabricated. There is no medical examiner\u2019s office in Alexandria.<\/p>\n What motivates you to continue writing about Scarpetta?<\/p>\n I don\u2019t ever get tired of her. I\u2019m not saying it\u2019s easy to come up with original stories every time, because it isn\u2019t. It\u2019s hard. \u2026 But in terms of dealing with her, I appreciate her point of view. I think that we have the same sensibilities. She\u2019s a nice character to spend time with because she\u2019s a decent person and she\u2019s very, very smart. I\u2019m always fascinated to see what she\u2019s going do with a situation.<\/p>\n What do you miss about living in Virginia now that you\u2019ve moved to Boston?<\/p>\n I miss a lot of things about Virginia. \u2026 I just think Virginia is really an amazing place to be. There\u2019s really not much that you can\u2019t get there. You can go from the biggest military installations to the biggest law enforcement installations to the quiet mountains to the coal mines to Luray Caverns to the beach.<\/p>\n Amazon has been filming a series based on Scarpetta. What is the status? [Nicole Kidman plays Kay Scarpetta and Jamie Lee Curtis is Scarpetta\u2019s older sister, Dorothy.]\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Amazon will be releasing it at some point in the first few months of next year. The writers\u2019 room is already assembling for Season 2. [Kidman and Curtis] are really something together, I will tell you that. I think people are going to have a lot of fun with it.<\/p>\n This interview has been edited for length and clarity.<\/p>\n Feature image of Patricia Cornwell courtesy Patrick Ecclesine<\/p>\n This story originally ran in our\u00a0October issue<\/a>.\u00a0For more stories like this,\u00a0subscribe<\/a>\u00a0to Northern Virginia Magazine.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Cornwell\u2019s new book finds her long-time protagonist, Kay Scarpetta, on the hunt for a serial killer in NoVA.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":74747,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[288,93,61,60],"class_list":["post-74746","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-books","tag-books","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74746","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=74746"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74746\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/74747"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=74746"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=74746"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=74746"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tGayle Jo Carter<\/a>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n