Identity Unknown
On sale
17th July 2025
Price: £9.99
Genre
THE THRILLING NEW KAY SCARPETTA MYSTERY FROM THE WORLDWIDE BESTSELLER
‘Iconic. Bold. Brilliant. Identity Unknown is hauntingly original, impossibly clever and devilishly daring. This series is one of the all-time greats’ CHRIS WHITAKER, author of ALL THE COLOURS OF THE DARK
Summoned to an unnerving, abandoned theme park to retrieve a body, Dr Kay Scarpetta is devastated to learn that the victim is Sal Giordano, an acclaimed astrophysicist – and a man Scarpetta once loved.
The murder scene is bizarre, with a crop circle of petals around the body. Scarpetta’s niece Lucy believes Giordano was dropped from an unidentified flying craft. Scarpetta knows autopsies 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 . . .
‘Nerve-jangling . . . A thriller that’s out of this world’ THE TIMES
‘Heart-stopping’ SUNDAY POST
‘Cornwell on vintage form’ FINANCIAL TIMES
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Reviews
America's most stimulating and chilling writer of crime fiction
The top gun in this field
Another heart-stopping read
America's most stimulating and chilling writer of crime fiction
Thirty years on, there's still no other crime writer like her
An especially good entry in the series
Cutting-edge
PRAISE FOR PATRICIA CORNWELL
The queen of the forensic thriller
Iconic. Bold. Brilliant. Identity Unknown is hauntingly original, impossibly clever and devilishly daring. Scalpel-sharp storytelling, trademark twists and characters that feel like family, this series is one of the all-time greats
The top gun in this field
A chilling, thrilling, macabre masterpiece. Unnatural Death is Patricia Cornwell at her mesmerising finest. The best just got better
One of the all-time greats of this genre
Forget the pretenders. Cornwell reigns
Astonishing . . . Thirty years on, there's still no other crime writer like her
Scarpetta is one of the best known heroines in crime fiction . . . Here Cornwell gives her some humanity in that she is called to examine the corpse of a man with whom she had an intense affair many year ago
One of the best crime writers writing today
Cornwell has been one of most reliable crime-fiction practitioners since Postmortem in 1990 introduced her forensic pathologist Kay Scarpetta. Identity Unknown has Scarpetta investigating a murder and finding to her horror that the victim is a man she was once in love with - and who seems to have left her a clue. Cornwell on vintage form
The queen of the forensic thriller
Forget the pretenders. Cornwell reigns
The Agatha Christie of the DNA age
Slick, fast-paced and brilliant
Cornwell really is in a league of her own
One of the best crime writers writing today
The Agatha Christie of the DNA age
When it comes to forensic sciences, nobody can touch Cornwell
A pioneer of the genre of forensic psychological thriller
Sinister, surprising and utterly unputdownable. Cornwell at her brilliant best
Combines nerve-jangling tension with stomach-turning physical detail . . . A thriller that's out of this world
PRAISE FOR PATRICIA CORNWELL
PRAISE FOR UNNATURAL DEATH
Classic Cornwell with an up-to-the-minute twenty-first-century plot - an intoxicating blend that proves Scarpetta is still queen of the autopsy and Cornwell is still queen of crime fiction. An utterly thrilling roller coaster ride
