Port Mortuary by Patricia Cornwell

Port Mortuary by Patricia Cornwell. New York Times Bestseller. A murder mystery involving Dr. Scarpetta (a woman). I've only read a couple of dozen pages, and the number of errors is appalling. She's taking a shower after a grueling autopsy. She wants to get clean. Come on, a shower is not going to wash out your sinuses, which is where the odor producing molecules created by tissue decomposition have lodged. You can't get rid of that shit. The smell is going to be with you for days, and if you are doing autopsies on a regular basis, you will never get rid of it. I imagine if you wore some kind of mask, you could keep that shit out, but a mask that worked well enough to keep the smell out would probably be a major pain to wear all day long. That's the big problem I have with all these shows that involve autopsies - the smell, or rather the actors lack of reaction to it. Maybe you could learn to tolerate it, but I can't imagine such a thing. I am repelled by foul smells. I clean the cat's litter box every day, and I detest it. Maybe I just have a sensitive nose.

Then there's the business of coming to get her while she's in the shower. This one is plausible, but annoying. Some guy name Marino has been trying to get in touch with her all day, but she has been busy. Somehow the message can't be delivered to her when she is done with work, but must wait until she is the shower, and then they can send someone to roust her.

She goes back to her hotel room to collect her things and and they are in such a tearing hurry that her killer niece is packing up her stuff, but instead of just throwing a bottle of Advil in the bag, she checks to see if there are enough pills in it to make it worthwhile to pack. When she is done packing, she suggests that her aunt might want to take a look around to see if she missed anything. WTF? It's a dang blasted hotel room. This is not a two person job. If you are going to pack my gear, then you check the room. If you can't be trusted to collect my stuff, then you shouldn't be doing it. You know, if they were ordinary stumble bums, like you or me, I can understand it, but if you are one of the elite, super qualified, super special, then we don't need any of this do over crap.

The last one was the gun with the missing serial numbers. Scarpetta is a doctor, she does autopsies. She works for a large bureaucracy. Guns are not her province, so why is she even discussing the gun, or it's missing serial numbers?

On the plus side, we have a dead body that bleeds all over after it was in the morgue and it didn't have any visible wounds. So I may have to keep reading to find out what's going on.

This is the author's photo on the back cover. She's 55. She looks like she's been airbrushed to within an inch of her life. I wonder how many more copies of this book will sell because of this photo.