See More From Book Club Friends

Sign up and log in to post, comment and join the conversation.

Book Club Friends is 100% Canadian 🇨🇦

Patricia Cornwell
Postmortem
Book #1 of the Kay Scarpetta series
See the list of Kay Scarpetta books in order

Postmortem

Discover the “dazzling…fascinating” (Los Angeles Times) forensic thriller that launched the New York Times bestselling Kay Scarpetta series from #1 bestselling crime writer Patricia Cornwell.

Under cover of night in Richmond, Virginia, a monster strikes, leaving a gruesome trail of stranglings that has paralyzed the city. Medical examiner Kay Scarpetta suspects the worst: a deliberate campaign by a brilliant serial killer whose signature offers precious few clues. With an unerring eye, she calls on the latest advances in forensic research to unmask the madman. But this investigation will test Kay like no other, because it’s being sabotaged from within—and someone wants her dead.

Author: Patricia Cornwell
Published: 1989
Page Count: 420

This page may include affiliate links.

Purchase on:

Amazon
Amazon

Book Club Discussion Questions For Postmortem

Postmortem
Discuss Postmortem With Your Book Club Friends

Do you want to take a deeper dive intoPostmortem? Chat about themes, characters, settings, plots and let’s celebrate this book for our Book of the Month discussion!

Suggest Postmortem

More Book Club Discussions

A Better Man
A Fatal Grace
A Great Reckoning
A Rule Against Murder
A Trick of the Light
A World of Curiosities
All the Devils Are Here
An Unfinished Love Story: A Personal History of the 1960s
Beautiful Ugly
Bury Your Dead
Glass Houses
How the Light Gets In
How to Stand Up to a Dictator: The Fight for Our Future
Iron Lake (20th Anniversary Edition)
Kingdom of the Blind
On Tyranny
State of Terror
Still Life
The Beautiful Mystery
The Boyfriend
The Briar Club
The Brutal Telling
The Crash
The Cruelest Month
The Frozen River
The Grey Wolf
The Housemaid
The Life We Bury
The Long Way Home
The Madness of Crowds
The Mighty Red
The Nature of the Beast
The River We Remember
The Rose Code
The Searcher
The Thursday Murder Club
See All Discussions

Highly Recommended Books by Patricia Cornwell Book Club Friends

Pray for Silence
I Am the Only Running Footman
The Dead Travel Fast
The Granite Coast Murders: A Brittany Mystery
Dead Lions
The Brutal Heart
It Begins in Betrayal
Survival of the Fittest: An Alex Delaware Novel
Down a Dark Road
Moscow Rules
Port Mortuary
Footloose: MatchUp Collection
The Poacher's Son
The Dirty Duck
The Devil's Star
The Evidence Exposed
The House at Sea's End
A Thief of Time
Out of the Deep I Cry
Thunderhead
The Beat Goes On: The Complete Rebus Stories
The Curse of the Pharaohs
Miss Kopp Investigates
A Cruel Fate
Wildcat: V. I. Warshawski's First Case
The Critic
Rebels and Traitors
The Marriage of Mary Russell
Blind Justice: A William Monk Novel
Blockade Billy
Past Imperfect
Lady in the Lake
Death of a Butterfly
Be Buried in the Rain
The Widows
OverKill
Roxanne: A Kings Lake Investigation
The Skeleton in the Closet
The Laughing Buddha: Malachai Samuels vs. D.D. Warren
Death of a Nurse
The Order
A Finer End
The Mist in the Mirror
The Favor
Bones Never Lie
A Twist of Fortune
The Fleur de Sel Murders: A Brittany Mystery
Death at Victoria Dock
Broken Harbor
Crime Scene: A Novel
Storm Front
A Christmas Garland
A Silent Death
A Darker Place
Widowmaker
Life Support
All That Remains
How to Seal Your Own Fate
First Frost: A Longmire Mystery
Call After Midnight
Past Prologue: MatchUp Collection
Partner in Crime
The Cruelest Month
Sizzling Sixteen
The Dark Angel
No Graves As Yet: A Novel
The Buckshaw Chronicles: Volume 1
I Shall Not Want
Winterkill
The Mysterious Case of the Missing Crime Writer
Charm City
A Great Deliverance
Listen to Me
Bethlehem Road
Explosive Eighteen
A Christmas Odyssey
The Wailing Wind
Death of a Heretic
Blind Descent
The Resistance Man
Macbeth: William Shakespeare's Macbeth Retold
Play with Fire
A Deceptive Devotion
Red Bones
There Goes the Bride
F is for Fugitive
The Walkers of Dembley
Breaking the Dark
The Shoeshine Man's Regrets
Never Saw it Coming
Deadly Stakes
Overboard: A V.I. Warshawski Novel
Invisible Prey
A Christmas Gathering
Blindfold Game
The Last Coyote
Seven Up
Full Bloom
Disappearance of a Scribe
The Keepsake: A Rizzoli & Isles Novel
The Black Tower
A Pale Horse
The Lighthouse
Two for the Dough
Deal Breaker
The Ghost of Christmas Past
The Red Queen
Love and Death Among the Cheetahs
Dark Road
The English Girl
Locked Rooms
Fractured: A Will Trent Novel
The Witch Elm
Missing and Endangered
Wicked Charms
Beautiful Ugly
The Locked Room
Bones of the Lost
Broken: A Novel
Medea
Big Driver
Agatha Raisin and the Love from Hell
A Demon In My View
Uniform Justice
The Grey Beginning
Cop Town
The Lying Room
Death of a Macho Man
Belgrave Square
A Christmas Message: A Novel
Nothing to Lose
Wednesday's Child: An Inspector Banks Novel
Billy Summers
Bewreathed: A Deborah Knott Short Story
The Graveyard of the Hesperides
A Traitor to Memory
The Minor Adjustment Beauty Salon
The Risk of Darkness
Sharp Objects: A Novel
The Executor: A Thriller
Death of a Perfect Wife
Long Lost: A Kate Burkholder Short Story
White Nights
The Perfect Murder
Jupiter's Bones
The Sleeping and the Dead
Live to Tell
Fair Warning
A Christmas Grace: A Novel
The Life We Bury
Corridors of the Night: A William Monk Novel
Triple Jeopardy
Sleeping in the Ground: An Inspector Banks Novel
Over the Edge
Hunting Season
Laurie R. King's Sherlock Holmes
The Wife Upstairs
The Truth: A DC Smith Investigation
Win
The Fallen
Long Range
The Language of Bees
Hasty Death
Dark Angel
Out of Bounds
The Good
The Five Bells and Bladebone
Blood in Eden
Bare Bones
Hints of Heliose
The Hidden One
A Christmas Legacy: A Novel
The Locked Door
Midnight at Marble Arch
An Island of Suspects: A Brittany Mystery
The Comforts of a Muddy Saturday
Powers of Detection
The Mary Russell Series: Books 2-4
In League with Sherlock Holmes
The Empress File
The Lair of the White Fox
The Beekeeper's Apprentice
The Naming of the Dead
The Fourth Sacrifice
Smoke in the Wind
Breakdown: A V.I. Warshawski Novel
The Fix
Bad Blood
The Night of the Lightbringer
A Letter of Mary
The One Thing More
Downfall
Crocodile on the Sandbank
The White Lady
The Secret Hours
Deserves to Be Dead: MatchUp Collection
The Ice Limit
Flesh and Blood
Vantage Point
Alexandria
Pay Dirt: A V.I. Warshawski Novel
The Stone Circle
At Midnight Comes the Cry
A Death in Vienna
Smoke and Mirrors
Look Alive Twenty-Five
The Spider's Web
Clown Town
Far From True
In Dark Company: A Kate Burkholder Short Story
I Know Who You Are
A Duty to the Dead
The Keys to the Street
Raisins and Almonds
Find Them Dead
Watchman: A Novel
A Sinister Revenge
Cave of Bones
The Obsidian Chamber
Raven Black
The Wedding Guest
The Jealousy Man and Other Stories
End of the Pier
Destroyer Angel
The Forgotten Affairs of Youth
The Truth About Melody Browne
The Amazing Mrs. Pollifax
The Redeemer
Angle of Investigation
No Second Chance
Long Lost
Earthly Delights
The Cellist
The Scarpetta Factor
Dakota
Trick Or Treat
The Escape
When Ghosts Come Home
High Country Fall
Back of Beyond
Skeleton Canyon
Manitou Canyon
The Flood
Take Out
Last Act in Palmyra
Silent On The Moor
Y is for Yesterday
The Last Mile
The September Society
The Right Attitude to Rain
Never Tell
Dreaming of the Bones
Redemption
Plum Spooky
Luck and Judgement: A DC Smith Investigation
A Day in the Death of Dorothea Cassidy
Talking to Strange Men
A Shooting at Chateau Rock
A Stained White Radiance
Crooked River
Sand Sharks
In the Presence of the Enemy
A Grave Talent
Among the Wicked
Buried Secrets
The Talented Mr. Varg
Death of Riley
Elegy for Eddie
A Darkness More Than Night
Critical Mass: A V.I. Warshawski Novel
Voices of Rome
Desperate Undertaking
For the Love of Mike
The Last Ballad
The Bone Orchard
Finger Lickin' Fifteen
Atonement of Blood
High Five
A Dark-Adapted Eye
Half Moon Bay: A Novel
Hero: A Simon Serrailler Short Story
The Floating Girl
Open Season
Image in the Lake
The Other Woman
Payment in Kind
Patriot's Dream
A Grave Robbery
Point of Origin
Drop Shot
Do Not Disturb
Ice Cold: A Rizzoli & Isles Novel
Gideon's Sword
Grave Secrets
Rather be the Devil
Rain Gods
The Stargazey
Nothing But Trouble
Paradise Valley
Wilde Lake