Author Patricia Cornwell talks to The Inside Reel about approach, concept and detail in regards to her newest Kay Scarpetta novel: "Identity Unknown" from Hachette Books.
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CreativityTranscript
00:00One of the things about Scarpetta, beyond the detail you go into, is just sort of the
00:24idea of her psychology, where her mind is, and of course with this book, it sort of turned
00:30on its ear a little bit.
00:31I don't want to give away too much, but that kind of logic versus emotion response is tested.
00:39Could you talk about finding that balance with her within this, in this specific novel,
00:44if you could?
00:46Well this is, it's unusual because when she is headed to a crime scene out in the middle
00:51of nowhere, an abandoned amusement park, where it appears the body's been dropped out
00:55of the sky and a UAP or UFO has appeared on radar and other sensors, and it's like, what
01:01in the world is going on here?
01:03If that's not bad enough, the victim is somebody that she not only has a really important professional
01:10and personal friendship with at this stage of life, they're on several government committees
01:14together, but it's somebody that she had an intense relationship with, a romantic one,
01:19in the very early days of her career, when she was teaching forensic pathology in Rome,
01:24Italy, and Sal Giordano, this astrophysicist was young and he's Italian, and they got together,
01:32they met in a bar, and she had this summer long relationship.
01:37It was sort of the love of her life at that time, but they went their separate ways after
01:41she returned to America.
01:44And so she has a lot of things that are coming up as she is imagined that you are going to
01:48a crime scene, and that body there is someone you have that history with, and she has to
01:53treat them like a biohazard, a hazmat concern, because has he been exposed to something of
01:59non-human origin that could be dangerous to humans.
02:03So she has to have a Geiger counter, a chemical suit, and it just seems, and double bagging
02:08in a special kind of autopsy pouch, which unfortunately is transparent, so she can see
02:14through it when she's riding back on the helicopter with the body on the floor to get to this
02:18special secret facility where she has to do the autopsy in front of all kinds of government
02:26people, the CIA, Space Force, and so forth.
02:30And so it does put her through an emotional ringer in a way, but the way she handles it
02:38is exactly the way she should.
02:41And I will remind people that in the real world, sometimes if you are a practitioner
02:46like this, if you are a forensic pathologist, you're going to have cases where you know
02:50the person.
02:52And I've experienced that myself when I worked in the medical examiner's office and a detective
02:57that I used to ride with almost every weekend for several years committed suicide during
03:02a serial murder investigation that he just had been pushed as far as he could.
03:07And when I got to work that morning, I went into the x-ray room to see his body and to
03:12say goodbye to him.
03:13And it's almost incomprehensible how you deal with that, but you have to compartmentalize
03:20and do the job, which is what SCARPETTA does in this case.
03:24But I think people are going to find this a very special journey, a lot of adventure,
03:28a lot of drama, and a lot of emotional pathos, but in a good way.
03:33It's not depressing.
03:37It sounds weird to say, but it's fun.
03:56But it's only through stakes that the thrill of this kind of novel works.
04:02There's one scene, I think, when she's on the helicopter, that scene you described,
04:06and there's the stillness.
04:08Even though everything's moving around and there's a storm, you feel the stillness of
04:12the body in the helicopter.
04:14And it's about that sort of dichotomy, that yin and yang, and the stakes just grow higher.
04:20And it's about that mystery.
04:21Could you talk about balancing stakes, balancing pacing?
04:25Because obviously, you're obviously an expert at this.
04:29Could you talk about that and finding the right pace for you and how that works with
04:33a SCARPETTA novel now?
04:35I sort of think of it as a symphony orchestra, that I'm conducting it, because I'm not the
04:41one playing all the fancy instruments.
04:43I'm not the characters who are doing all this.
04:45But you've got to keep every section of it in balance and in tune.
04:50And you can't let one overwhelm the other.
04:53You can't have the percussion too loud or the strings too quiet.
04:56And so you bring up a very good point, is that when you're working on stories like this,
05:03there is an awful lot that you're simply doing in the rendering of it.
05:08It's not even the story as much as how it's told, which is true with TV and film.
05:14It's oftentimes, it's how it's filmed, the cinematography.
05:19And if you don't have things exactly right, it's not going to work for people.