Part of Kay Scarpetta, book 28
First published 2024
Dr Kay Scarpetta arrives at a deserted theme park to examine a corpse. The victim turns out to be Sal Giordano, a man she loved during her early career while teaching in Rome. Their intense affair had evolved into a lasting friendship over the years. The murder scene baffles everyone. Someone arranged flower petals in a perfect circle around Giordano's body. His skin shows an unnatural red coloration. Scarpetta's niece Lucy theorizes that an unknown aircraft dropped the body from above. The investigation splits the team. Some suspect supernatural forces while others question Giordano's own involvement in his death. Scarpetta performs the autopsy and discovers that her dead friend appears to have left her a deliberate message. She rejects theories about alien intervention. Instead, she uncovers evidence pointing to a human perpetrator whose motives strike her as far more sinister than any otherworldly explanation.
Genres: suspense, mystery, crime, thriller
Vibes: dark, intimate, suspenseful
Tropes: amateur-sleuth, unreliable-narrator
Setting: Rome, Theme Park
Period: Early Career
400 pages · Hardcover · Grand Central Publishing
Content warnings: death, murder