Identity Unknown

By Patricia Cornwell

Book Overview

From a bestselling author, a "hauntingly original, impossibly clever and devilishly daring" thriller in which Scarpetta receives a message from beyond the grave...(Chris Whitaker, author of All the Colors of the Dark)

"Identity Unknown is hauntingly original, impossibly clever and devilishly daring." - Chris Whitaker

Autopsies can reveal the secrets of the dead.

And this victim is sending Scarpetta a message...

Summoned to an abandoned theme park to retrieve a body, Dr. Kay Scarpetta is devastated to learn that the victim is a man she once had an intense love affair with.

The murder scene is bizarre, with a crop circle of petals around the body, and Giordano's skin is strangely red. Scarpetta's niece Lucy believes he was dropped from an unidentified flying craft. Scarpetta knows an autopsy can reveal the dead's secrets, but she is shocked to find her friend seems to have deliberately left her a clue.

As the investigators are torn between suspicions of otherworldly forces, and of Giordano himself, Scarpetta detects an explanation closer to home that, in her mind, is far more evil...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1538770407
• ISBN13: 9781538770405
• Release Date: July 2025
• Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
• Length: 400 Pages
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 5.3" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

Sci Fi is not appreciated by Mystery readers

I have enjoyed Patricia Cornwell's books over the years, admittedly those written earlier are better than the last few titles. I sort of gave up on her when she started getting extremely technical in a book describing everything that went on in an on-scene coroner's tent. But I was encouraged when I read a few of the first pages of Identity Unknown. By chapter 11 it was apparent she was just going to continue to delve into UFOs and I shut the book. Once again she was knee deep in more and more technical detail. Not sure if I will even give it to Goodwill for someone else to become disenchanted... Boo Hiss Boo Great talent and possibly a great plot... but I don't read Sci Fi.