Blow Fly

Blow Fly is a crime novel by Patricia Cornwell, published in 2003, and the twelfth book in the series starring Dr. Kay Scarpetta. After resigning as Virginia's Chief Medical Examiner and surviving the events of The Last Precinct, Scarpetta leaves Richmond for Florida, where she starts work as a private forensic consultant. Her first cases focus on the forensic significance of blow flies found on human remains. Her past, however, gives her no rest: her grief for Benton Wesley deepens rather than fades, and the anger of her niece Lucy keeps growing.

The thread that ties the story together comes from death row. Jean-Baptiste Chandonne, the man who upended Scarpetta's life, contacts her from a Texas prison, deformed and blinded by her own actions, yet still able to terrify. What Scarpetta does not know is that other forces lie behind his apparent moves, quietly steering her and those close to her toward removing those who threaten them. Everything is orchestrated by the one man in her life who knows every nuance of her soul.

The novel also shifts its narrative voice. In place of Kay's first-person account, a third-person omniscient narrator gives access to many characters and, for the first time in the series, to the minds of criminals, something earlier books had kept from the reader. Critics have been divided. Some found it a tense and believable read, while others judged it disappointing, pointing to its fragmented structure of over a hundred short chapters and its treatment of female characters.