Cheap Southern Cross (Book) (Patricia Daniels Cornwell) Price

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Customer Reviews of Southern Cross

Is this really Patricia Cornwell?
I could not believe this was the same author who wrote all those wonderful Kay Scarpetta books. This book is terrible. Let me backtrack: In the very beginning, we are introduced to several characters such as Popeye, our main character's dog, who is presented as though she can think like a human. Some of the story lines come from the dog's mouth; " Popeye licked her owner's face and felt pity. Popeye knew her owner was denying the grief and the guilt she felt about her late husband's death." (How in the world could a dog, even stretching your imagination, know THAT?) Later, we meet Niles the cat, who has the same uncanny ability as Popeye the dog. There are other characters: Bubba (real name: But Fluck, wife's name is Honey), Smudge, Gig Dan, Smoke, Weed Gardener, Divinity, Wally Fling, Captain Cloud, Mr. Curry, Mr. Pretty, Mrs. Fan, ad nauseum. We are expected to accept these characters as real people. Each time I came across a new name, I took the book less and less seriously. We then meet the chairman of the Governor's Blue Ribbon Crime Commission (whose name is okay but suspiciously similar to Amelia Earhart), Lelia Ehrhart, who talks like this: " You're hanging out by a thread on a limb all alone on this one!". The only explanation we get is that Ms. Ehrhart was raised in Vienna and Yugoslavia and does not speak English well. I re-read several paragraphs, thinking my eyes had finally bought the farm, when I realized this was intentional. The plot? You won't be sure what it is until well past half of the book, but it goes something like this: Police chief Judy Hammer (groan) is tasked to clean up the city of Richmond, Virginia in the span of a one year term. She is assisted by Officer Andy Brazil and Deputy Chief Virginia West. As a team, they will clean up Richmond and fix all of the police department's problems, with an ultimate goal of uniting all the police departments in the South, an okay (but just okay) beginning plot until you find they have one year to do this. Then you find that they intend to do it with a computer system, (ho hum). There is, in all this, a murder, and it is told with the usual Patricia Cornwell aplomb, but there is never any mystery and this is not a whodunit. I gave it two stars because despite the distracting names and animal characterization, there WAS a story, albeit a small one. I ended up really liking the character "Weed", but found the villain too villainous to be believable. I think Patricia Cornwell should stick to Kay Scarpetta.

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Not my favorite Cornwell read
This one misses the mark for me. Try another like the Body Farm to enjoy this talented writer. From Potter's Field was also a good read.

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The "Plan 9 From Outer Space" of detective fiction.
Southern Cross is too ridiculous to be a detective novel, to violent to be a comic novel. This is my first venture into Cornwell. I have been told that her Scarpetta novels are better. I may try one of them one day, but I am too astounded by this book to try another or her soon.

Starting with a character named Buttner (called Butt) Fluck, aka Bubba, a blue-blooded southern aristocrat with an Austrian accent who speaks English like Chico Marx, and a thoroughly dislikable bad guy who is a well dressed, well groomed white guy with suspicious eyes, who gets sexually aroused by robbing and later by killing people.

When one watches a farce on stage, on knows that all of the characters are going to interact with each other and there will be no outside characters. Southern Cross is just such a farce. The coincidences never stop.