Southern Cross

Rating:
Summary: Not worth reading!
Review: All I can say is, I am glad I got the book from the library and didn't pay good money for a totally boring and unreadable story. Get back to your Kay Scarpetta themes unless you want to lose your readers.

Rating:
Summary: The book does not hold your interest.
Review: Had this been Ms. Cornwell's first book, I would not have read another one. The story line is not interesting and she has not developed a character you feel connected to. I very much miss Kay Scarpetta.

Rating:
Summary: Cornwell-Lite
Review: Ignore the fact that the characters came from Hornet's Nest, and that it says Patricia Cornwell on the cover, and you could be forgiven for thinking that Southern Cross had been written by Carl Hiassen. That is, Carl Hiassen firing on three cylinders. Had he been the author, and been firing on the rest, the point and click narrative carnival would have overflowed with sharp observation, characters gritty with unattenuated contrast and lashings of "meanwhile . . ." cunning as the players converge exponentially toward the conclusion. Equally, had the Patricia Cornwell who more or less got back to form with Point Of Origin written Southern Cross, the firm of Hammer, West & Brazil could be squaring up for some firecracker close-quarter action in their next appearance. In the face of cartoon rednecks, inept homeboys and spoonerising immigrants, they are in real danger of getting stereotyped as those clowns who divide up the Scarpetta stories.

Rating:
Summary: EXTREMELY Disappointed
Review: I have found it absolutely daunting, to say the least, to finish this book. I have been embarrassed at times for Ms Cornwell, who apparently did not put too much thought into her latest work. The plot, the characters, everything is awful.

Rating:
Summary: A pleasant diversion
Review: Contrary to most of the reviews here, I liked this book. I thought it was a welcome relief from old Kay S., who (in my opinion) has grown awfully stale. I thought Hornet's Nest was one of the worst books I'd ever read, but Southern Cross seemed more tightly woven and definitely more amusing. I too actually wondered if Cornwell wrote this book, but only because there was a modicum of humor in it, something I've never seen in previous books.

Rating:
Summary: Total failure on every level
Review: As with Hornet's Nest, I bought this book without thinking to check whether or not it was a Scarpetta novel. Fool me twice, shame on me! The book fails on every possible level. It is not a good mystery, it is not a good police procedural, it is filled with woefully lame humor and, again as with Hornet's Nest, the anthropomorphism of various dogs and cats left me filled with despair at having once again counted, mistakenly, on the professional level of writing I had grown to expect from Cornwell's intelligent Scarpetta novels. These two non-Scarpetta books seem to be written by a different writer -- one who is less skillful on every level from plotline to character development. I will never again automatically buy one of this previously well-liked author's works.

Rating:
Summary: I did not like this book at all never finished it.
Review: I am a big fan of Patricia Cornwell but I was very disappointed in this book it was a waste of time and money and I never finished it.

Rating:
Summary: Nobody's Weed
Review: This book has no discernible plot, no character to identify with other than a juvenile, can't be all bad deliquent called Weed; no villian to hate worth hating, no cohesion in the telling of the story; and no reason to read it other than the name of the author. It seems that Cornwell must have needed money or just wanted to publish a bad book and see how many fools would buy it. I promise you that if this was a first novel it would have never seen the light of day as written. There is a book somewhere in this story but it needs to be rewritten a couple of times over by somebody who CARES. It is clear that Cornwell does not. Poor Weed, he could have been a flower if he had been properly tended to.

Rating:
Summary: Disgruntled!
Review: I too, could not finish this book and put it on the shelf after struggling through to chapter five. Having read all previous books by Patricia Cornwell, this along with "Hornet's Nest" were my biggest disappointments thus far, (by the way, the characters in Hornet's Nest were the same used for this novel). After waiting this long for the book, I regret having bought this hard cover. I am still a devoted and avid Cornwell reader but, I will delay my "buy impulses" when the next novel surfaces. I think I speak for a majority of her readers when I say, "Bring back Kay Scarpetta!!"

Rating:
Summary: In a nutshell
Review: Nothing happens