Flesh and blood

Itsa sunny morning in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and alsoDr. Kay Scarpettas birthday.Shes about to head to Miami for a vacation with Benton Wesley, her FBI profiler husband, when she notices seven pennies on a wall behind theirhome.

Is this a kids game? If so, why are all of the coins dated 1981 and so shiny they could be newly minted?

Hercell phonerings, and Detective Pete Marino tells her theres been a homicide five minutes away.

A high school music teacherwasshot with uncanny precision as he unloaded groceries from his car.Yet no one heard orsawa thing.In thistwenty-secondScarpetta novel,shefinds herself in the unsettling pursuit of a serial sniper who leaves no incriminating evidence except fragments of copper.

The shots seem impossibleto achieve, yet they are so perfectthatthey cause deathin an instant.

The victims appear to have had nothing in common, and there is no pattern to indicate where the killer will strike next.

First New Jersey, then Massachusetts, andnow it looks like the killer has moved elsewhere, tothe murky depths off the coast.Its here thatScarpettadivesa shipwreck, looking for answers that only she can discover and analyze. Andwhereshe comes face to face with shockingnewsthat implicates her techno genius niece, Lucy, Scarpettasveryown flesh and blood.With the bravura storytelling and state-of-the-art forensic details that are her hallmarks, Patricia Cornwell again raises the bar with this highly entertaining new tale, her most captivating Scarpetta novel yet.