"Dr. Kay Scarpetta, the creation of crime novelist Patricia Cornwell, was a pioneering figure when she first appeared in 1990's Postmortem. Through the 28 books that followed, Scarpetta has shown herself to be passionately focused and elegantly turned out. The daughter of Northern Italian immigrants, she's an excellent cook who makes her own pasta from scratch."
"Scarpetta is also likely nobody's idea of a conventional detective series. For one thing, at least as many minutes of the early episodes are devoted to Kay's messy domestic situation as are to the case at hand. And even the case at hand is personally problematic for Kay because the dead woman whose body is discovered by the train tracks has been murdered according to the pattern of a serial killer that Kay famously caught 25 years ago."
"This may sound muddled, but Scarpetta works, perhaps against the odds, and it works splendidly. The eight-episode series—which has already been greenlit for a second season—begins as a peculiar fusion of family drama and icky autopsy-table close-ups. Kay tries to figure out why a weapon used in the recent murder is covered with the fingerprints of a suspect who was exonerated in that long-ago case."
Kay Scarpetta, Patricia Cornwell's pioneering female medical examiner character created in 1990, has become a television archetype that inspired women to enter forensic medicine. The character, depicted across 28 novels as passionate, elegant, and skilled, is now portrayed by Nicole Kidman in Amazon Prime's new series. Though Kidman's casting seems unconventional for the Italian-American character, the adaptation succeeds by balancing Kay's complicated domestic life with forensic investigation. The series opens with a murder matching a serial killer's pattern from 25 years prior, forcing Kay to question whether she convicted the wrong person. The eight-episode series has already been renewed for a second season.
Read at Slate Magazine
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