Patricia Cornwell
Patricia Cornwell's life is so dense with events and idiosyncrasies that it
is bound to thrill most of her fans. After all, anyone who can't get enough
of her star character, Dr. Kay Scarpetta, has a taste for the offbeat.
Scarpetta is a reasonably attractive woman in her 40s who also happens
to be the chief medical examiner for the State of Virginia. Under a shield
of efficiency and within the confines of a scientific, analytical mind, there
lurks Scarpetta's vulnerable heart. Scarpetta can dissect a corpse and
come up with enough clues to solve a crime, but she is likely also to be
found with her arms around her beloved niece, Lucy, or in the arms of a
lover. She is just as competent with a shotgun as she is with a scalpel.
Cornwell has written eight Scarpetta novels, the most recent being
Unnatural Exposure.
Cornwell, a fan of firearms and fast cars, clearly recalls the day her father
walked out on his family for his pregnant secretary. The future author, 7
years old, was hanging onto his leg at the time. She soon moved with her
mother and brother to Montreat, North Carolina, just two miles down the
road from the Rev. Billy Graham and his wife, Ruth. At one point,
Cornwell's mother was so desperate that she tried to "give" her kids to the
Grahams. Ruth Graham responded by befriending the young Patricia,
encouraging her to write. (Later, in 1983, Cornwell wrote her first book, A
Time For Remembering, Mrs. Graham's biography.)
While a student at Davidson College in North Carolina, Cornwell met her
future husband, Charles Cornwell, 17 years her senior, who also
happened to be her English professor. They wed when she was 24 and he
was 41. (The 10-year marriage ended in divorce in 1989.) Among the
experiences and challenges in her life, Cornwell has numbered anorexia
and bulimia, manic depression, a rape by a law enforcement officer when
she was a young crime reporter, and, in 1983, a car wreck when she was
driving while intoxicated. Cornwell calls the accident "a necessary
experience" that eventually led her to alcohol rehab. In 1979 Cornwell
began her career as police reporter, winning an investigative reporting
award, but soon moved on to the Virginia Chief Medical Examiner's Office
in Richmond, where she was a computer analyst. Much of what she
observed in her work was incorporated into her first bestseller,
Postmortem. Following the success of that novel, Cornwell quit her job to
become a full-time author. She lives with her dog Chopper and splits her
time between Richmond, Virginia and Los Angeles.
AWARDS
Cornwell's first Scarpetta book, Postmortem (1990), is the only novel ever
to win the Edgar, Creasey, Anthony, and Macavity awards, as well as the
French Prix du Roman d'Aventure in a single year.
Cornwell is the only woman in the United States to receive England's
coveted Gold Dagger, widely considered to be the world's most
prestigious crime-writing award.
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