Cruel and Unusual

Patricia Cornwell is a Miami born, contemporary crime novelist. Her books usually feature the heroine Dr. Kay Scarpetta, who is a medical examiner. After a way sad childhood, Cornwall graduated from Davidson College with a degree in English. She wrote a biography of a family friend entitled, “A Time for Remembering”, then renamed “Ruth, A Portrait: The Story of Ruth Bell Graham” in 1983. After working in a Virginia medical examiners for six years, she wrote the first installment of her “Scarpetta” series entitled “Postmortem”. Her six year job was valuable in including a lot of forensic science details in her “Scarpetta” series. Her novels are considered to have influenced the creation of the TV series on forensics such as CSI: Crime Scene Investigation and Cold Case. In the same vein Cornwell made a brief appearance on the Criminal Minds episode “True Genius”, as herself.