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Cornwell, Patricia
(1956- ), American author known
for her forensic-detective novels. Since her debut of Postmortem in 1990, Patricia has written several other books
featuring heroine Dr. Kay Scarpetta. The fictitious Scarpetta, chief medical
examiner of Virginia,
finds clues on the bodies brought into the morgue that help her solve crimes
and track down killers. Because of Scarpetta, Patricia’s books now regularly
debut on the New York Times best
seller list.
Patricia
Cornwell was born Patricia Daniels on June
9, 1956 in Miami, Florida.
The daughter of Sam and Marilyn Daniels, an attorney and a secretary,
respectively, Patricia moved to Montreat,
North Carolina with her newly
divorced mother when she was seven. Her mother began having long bouts of
depression and had to be hospitalized, so Patricia and her two brothers were
placed in a foster home for four months.
Patricia
earned excellent grades, but in high school and her entrance into King
College in Tennessee,
she began battling anorexia and bulimia. Patricia was hospitalized briefly in
the same facility that her mother had once stayed and recovered quickly.
Upon
recovery, Patricia transferred to Davidson
College in North
Carolina where she graduated with a bachelor’s
degree in English in 1979. In 1980, Patricia married one of her former
professors, Charles Cornwell, 17 years her senior.
Patricia
first worked as a midnight copy
assistant at the Charlotte Observer,
but aspired to be a reporter. She began taking the stories that no one wanted
to write and within six months, she was a reporter and began covering crime
stories at the end of her first year. The local police did not take well to
her at first because of their dislike for the Observer, but soon she was riding along with them to crime
scenes. However, being a reporter was not fulfilling, so Patricia began to
seek a job for her passion of crime solving.
Not long
after leaving the Observer,
Patricia and her husband moved to Richmond, Virginia.
When she began working as a volunteer police officer, she visited the morgue
for the first time and became a frequent visitor. She was offered a job first
as a technical writer and later as a computer analyst, and it was there that
she started writing novels. It was also there that her marriage ended.
After several
unsuccessful attempts to publish, Patricia got advice from her editor to
“write what she knew.” Her unpublished novels had introduced Dr. Kay
Scarpetta, with whom Patricia ultimately made the main character of her
books. After seven rejections, Scribner’s agreed to publish Postmortem in 1990. The book won the
John Creasey, Edgar, Anthony, Macavity, and French Prix du Roman d’Aventure awards.
Since the debut of Postmortem
(1990), Patricia has written at a steady rate of about one book per year
featuring Dr. Scarpetta, including All
That Remains (1992), From Potter’s
Field (1995), and The Last Precinct (2000).
Patricia
currently resides in Richmond, Virginia
and continues to write about the adventures of Dr. Scarpetta and other
unrelated books.
Words: 500
Bibliography
Avery, Laura, ed. Newsmakers: The People Behind Today’s
Headlines. 2003
Cumulation. New York: The Gale Group,
2003.
Schich, Elizabeth A., ed. 1997 Current Biography
Yearbook. New York:
The H. W.
Wilson
Company, 1997.
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