Patricia Cornwell is the former Director of Applied Forensic Science at the National Forensic Academy, and a member of the Harvard—affiliated McLean Hospital's National Council, where she is an advocate for psychiatric research. She is the 2008 winner of the Galaxy British Book Awards' Books Direct Crime Thriller of the Year award —the first American ever to win this prestigious award. She is the author of sixteen previous Scarpetta novels, five non-Scarpettas (including At Risk), and Portrait of a Killer. Her earlier works include Postmortem— the only novel to win the Edgar, Creasey, Anthony, and Macavity awards and the French Prix du Roman d'Aventure in a single year—and Cruel and Unusual, which won Britain's Gold Dagger Award for best crime novel of 1993. Dr. Kay Scarpetta herself won the 1999 Sherlock Award for the best detective created by an American author

It is the week before Christmas. The effects of the credit crunch have prompted Dr. Kay Scarpetta to offer her services pro bono to New York City's Office of the Chief Medical Examiner. But in no time at all, her increased visibility seems to precipitate a string of dramatic and unsettling events. She is asked live on the air about the sensational case of Hannah Starr, who has vanished and is presumed dead. Moments later during the same broadcast, she receives a startling call-in from a former psychiatric patient of Benton Wesley's. When she returns after the show to the apartment where she and Benton live, she finds a suspicious package -- possibly a bomb - waiting for her at the front desk. Soon the apparent threat on Scarpetta's life finds her embroiled in a deadly plot that includes a famous actor accused of an unthinkable sex crime and the disappearance of a beautiful millionairess with whom Lucy seems to have shared a secret past...