The most impressive technique in the series is the voice Cornwell has crafted for Scarpetta. Scarpetta conveys both steely control and immense capacity to feel. She withholds her feelings from most others, but not from readers.

The sequence in this novel that best exemplifies this voice is a tour de force: Scarpetta's arrival on Tangier Island to examine the dead woman with the exotic infection (Chapter 8). As she takes in the specifics that will help her investigation, she sees also the emotional significances in the conditions in the dead woman's home. Scarpetta muses as she stands in the living room: "Pillows and blankets were disarrayed and soiled on the couch, and on the coffee table were tissues, a thermometer, bottles of aspirin, liniment, dirty cups and plates. She had been feverish. She had ached . ..." As a good scientist, Scarpetta moves from fact to analysis: the items on the...