Patricia Cornwell

Patricia Cornwell
Born Patricia Carroll Daniels
(1956-06-09) June 9, 1956
Miami, Florida, United States
Occupation Novelist, 1990–present
Nationality American
Genre Crime fiction
Spouse Charles Cornwell (1979–1989)
Staci Gruber (2005–present)
Website
www.patriciacornwell.com

Patricia Cornwell (born Patricia Carroll Daniels; June 9, 1956) is a contemporary American crime writer. She is widely known for writing a popular series of novels featuring the heroine Dr. Kay Scarpetta, a medical examiner. Her books have sold more than 100 million copies.

Early life

A descendant of abolitionist and writer Harriet Beecher Stowe,[1] Cornwell was born in Miami, Florida to Marilyn and Sam Daniels. Her father was one of the leading appellate lawyers in the United States and served as a law clerk to Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black. Cornwell later traced her own motivations in life to the emotional abuse she says she suffered from her father, who walked out on the family on Christmas Day 1961. She has said, "He was on his deathbed. We knew it was the last time we’d see each other; he grabbed my brother's hand and mouthed 'I love you,' but he never touched me. All he did was write on a legal pad 'How's work?'"[2]

In 1961, Cornwell's family moved to Montreat, North Carolina, where her mother was hospitalized for depression. Cornwell and her brothers, Jim and John, were placed in the foster care system. Cornwell attended King College in Bristol, Tennessee, before transferring to Davidson College, where she graduated with a B.A. in English.

Career

In 1979, Cornwell started working as a reporter for The Charlotte Observer and soon began covering crime. Her biography of family friend Ruth Bell Graham, A Time for Remembering (renamed Ruth, A Portrait: The Story of Ruth Bell Graham in subsequent editions), was published in 1983. In 1984, she took a job at the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner of Virginia. She worked there for six years, first as a technical writer and then as a computer analyst. She also volunteered to work with the Richmond Police Department. Cornwell wrote three novels that she says were rejected before the publication, in 1990, of the first installment of her Scarpetta series, Postmortem.

Scarpetta series

Main article: Kay Scarpetta

The Scarpetta novels include a great deal of detail on forensic science. The initial resolution to the mystery is found in the forensic investigation of the murder victim's corpse, although Scarpetta does considerably more field investigation and confrontation with suspects than real-life medical examiners. The novels generally climax with action scenes in which Scarpetta and her associates confront, or are confronted by, the killer or killers, usually concluding with the death of the killer. The novels are considered to have influenced the development of popular TV series on forensics, both fictional, such as CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, and documentaries, such as Cold Case Files.

Other significant themes in the Scarpetta novels include health, individual safety and security, food, family, and the emerging sexual self-discovery of Scarpetta's niece. Often, conflicts and secret manipulations by Scarpetta's colleagues and staff are involved in the storyline and make the murder cases more complex. Although scenes from the novels take place in a variety of locations around the United States and (less commonly) internationally, they center around the city of Richmond, Virginia.

There are two remarkable style shifts in the Scarpetta novels. Starting from The Last Precinct (2000), the style changes from past tense to present tense. Starting from Blow Fly (2003), the style changes from a first person to a third person, omniscient, narrator. Events are even narrated from the viewpoint of the murderers. Before Blow Fly the events are seen through Scarpetta's eyes only, and other points of view only appear in letters that Scarpetta reads.

Cornwell shifted back to a first-person perspective in the Scarpetta novel Port Mortuary (2010).

Andy Brazil/Judy Hammer series

In addition to the Scarpetta novels, Cornwell has written three pseudo-police fictions, known as the Trooper Andy Brazil/Superintendent Judy Hammer series, which are set in North Carolina, Virginia, and off the mid-Atlantic coast. Besides the older-woman/younger-man premise, the books include discomforting themes of scatology and sepsis.

Jack the Ripper

Cornwell has been involved in a continuing, self-financed search for evidence to support her theory that painter Walter Sickert was Jack the Ripper. She wrote Portrait of a Killer—Jack the Ripper: Case Closed, which was published in 2002 to much controversy, especially within the British art world and among Ripperologists.[3][4][5] Cornwell denied being obsessed with Jack the Ripper in full-page ads in two British newspapers and has said the case was "far from closed".[6][7] In 2001, Cornwell was criticized for allegedly destroying one of Sickert's paintings in pursuit of the Ripper's identity.[8] She believed the well-known painter to be responsible for the string of murders and had purchased over thirty of his paintings and argued that they closely resembled the Ripper crime scenes.[8] Cornwell also claimed a breakthrough: a letter written by someone purporting to be the killer, had the same watermark as some of Sickert's writing paper.[8] Ripper experts noted, however, that there were hundreds of letters from different authors falsely claiming to be the killer, and the watermark in question was on a brand of stationery that was widely available.[4]

TV appearance

She made a brief appearance on the police procedural drama Criminal Minds in the episode "True Genius" as herself.

Legal issues

On January 10, 1993, Cornwell crashed her Mercedes-Benz while under the influence of alcohol. She was convicted of drunk driving and sentenced to 28 days in a treatment center.[9]

Leslie Sachs case

Leslie Sachs, author of The Virginia Ghost Murders (1998), claimed there were similarities between his novel and Cornwell's The Last Precinct. In 2000, he sent letters to Cornwell's publisher, started a web page, and placed stickers on copies of his novel alleging that Cornwell was committing plagiarism. The U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia granted Cornwell a preliminary injunction against Sachs, opining that his claims were likely to be found baseless.[10]

In 2007, during her libel suit against Sachs, Cornwell testified that Sachs had accused her in online postings of being a "Jew hater" and "neo-Nazi" who bribed judges, conspired to have him killed, and was under investigation by U.S. authorities.[11][12] The court permanently enjoined Sachs from making defamatory accusations against Cornwell and awarded Cornwell $37,780 in damages to cover the costs of defending herself against Sachs' internet attacks.[13]

Anchin, Block & Anchin

In 2004, Cornwell assigned management of her financial matters to New York-based Anchin, Block & Anchin, managed by principal Evan Snapper. Agreeing to pay the firm a base rate of $40,000/month,[14] her lawyer later claimed that Cornwell had hired Snapper to insulate herself from her money due to her ongoing mental health issues, and that Snapper knew this and took advantage of her over her four-and-a-half-year relationship with the company.[14]

Cornwell fired the firm after discovering in July 2009 that the net worth of her and her company, Cornwell Entertainment Inc., despite having above $10 million in earnings per year during the previous four years, was a little under $13 million, the equivalent of only one year's net income. After Cornwell filed the lawsuit, Snapper pleaded guilty to violating campaign finance regulations. The court case opened in January 2013, with Cornwell suing the firm for a combined sum of $100M.[14][15] On February 19, a Boston jury awarded Cornwell US$50.9 million (£33.4 million).[16]

Personal life

Relationships

In 1980, shortly after graduating from Davidson College in North Carolina, she married one of her English professors, Charles L. Cornwell, who was 17 years her senior.[17] Professor Cornwell later left his tenured professorship to become a preacher. In 1989, the couple separated, with Patricia retaining her married name after the divorce.

From 1991 to 1992, Cornwell was involved in an affair with Margo Bennett, a married FBI agent, after meeting her at the FBI Academy in Quantico, Virginia, where Cornwell was doing research for her Scarpetta novels.[18] In 1996, the affair came to light after Margo Bennett's estranged husband, FBI agent Gene Bennett, was arrested for, and later convicted of, the attempted murder of his wife and the abduction of Margo's church pastor.[18]

In 2005, Cornwell married Staci Ann Gruber, an instructor of psychiatry at Harvard University. However, she did not disclose news of her marriage until 2007.[19] Cornwell later stated that turning 50 had made her see the importance of speaking out for equal rights and spoke of how Billie Jean King had helped her come to terms with talking about her sexuality publicly.[20] She lives with Gruber in Massachusetts.[21][22]

Since childhood, Cornwell has been friends with the family of evangelist Billy Graham and his wife Ruth Bell, often serving as the family's unofficial spokesperson to the media.[23] She also wrote an authorized biography of Ruth Bell Graham. Cornwell was previously a personal friend of former President George H. W. Bush, whom she referred to as "Big George", spending a number of weeks at the family's summer retreat in Kennebunkport, Maine.

Health Problems

Cornwell has in the past suffered from anorexia nervosa and depression, which began in her late teens.[2][24] She spoke openly about her struggle with bipolar disorder,[24] but in 2015 said that she was misdiagnosed.[25]

Political views

Since 1998, Cornwell has donated at least $130,000 to the Republican Party, and has made additional individual contributions to Republican U.S. Senate candidates, including George Allen, John Warner, and Orrin Hatch.[26] She has occasionally supported specific Democratic candidates as well, including Hillary Clinton, Nicola Tsongas, Charles Robb, and Mark Warner.[26]

Cornwell has spoken negatively of the presidency of George W. Bush, saying, "I was supportive of young George W. Bush because I liked his family. I thought he was going to be another Big George. Boy, was I ever wrong. It's not a democracy so much as a theocracy, and those are not the principles this country was founded on."[27]

Charity

Cornwell has made several notable charitable donations, including funding the Virginia Institute for Forensic Science and Medicine, funding scholarships to the University of Tennessee's National Forensics Academy and Davidson College's Creative Writing Program (the result of which is the Patricia Cornwell Creative Writing Scholarship, awarded to one or two incoming freshmen), and donating her collection of Walter Sickert paintings to Harvard University. As a member of the Harvard-affiliated McLean Hospital's National Council, she is an advocate for psychiatric research. She has also made million-dollar donations to the John Jay College of Criminal Justice for the Crime Scene Academy and to the Harvard Art Museum.

Bibliography

Fiction series

Kay Scarpetta series:
  1. Postmortem (1990)
  2. Body of Evidence (1991)
  3. All That Remains (1992)
  4. Cruel and Unusual (1993)
  5. The Body Farm (1994)
  6. From Potter's Field (1995)
  7. Cause of Death (1996)
  8. Unnatural Exposure (1997)
  9. Point of Origin (1998)
  10. Black Notice (1999)
  11. The Last Precinct (2000)
  12. Blow Fly (2003)
  13. Trace (2004)
  14. Predator (2005)
  15. Book of the Dead (2007)
  16. Scarpetta (2008)
  17. The Scarpetta Factor (2009)
  18. Port Mortuary (2010)
  19. Red Mist (2011)
  20. The Bone Bed (2012)
  21. Dust (2013)
  22. Flesh and Blood (2014)
  23. Depraved Heart (2015)
  24. Chaos (2016)
Andy Brazil / Judy Hammer series:
  1. Hornet's Nest (1996)
  2. Southern Cross (1999)
  3. Isle of DoGs (2001)
At Risk / Win Garano series:
  1. At Risk (2006)
  2. The Front (2008)
Children's books:

Non-fiction

Omnibus

Awards

References

  1. ↑ Patricia Cornwell Biography and Notes (1956-06-09). "Patricia Cornwell Biography and List of Works - Patricia Cornwell Books". Biblio.com. Retrieved 2012-01-30.
  2. 1 2 Watson, Roland. "Unknown". The Times (London). Retrieved 2010-05-21. (subscription required (help)).
  3. ↑ "November Article: Portrait of the Artist as a Serial Killer". Artcyclopedia.com. Retrieved 2012-01-30.
  4. 1 2 "Jack the Ripper - The Art of Murder". Casebook. Retrieved 2012-01-30.
  5. ↑ "Jack the Ripper - Patricia Cornwell and Walter Sickert: A Primer". Casebook. Retrieved 2012-01-30.
  6. ↑ "The Grand Old Ripper". The Guardian (London). 2005-08-25. Retrieved 2010-05-21.
  7. ↑ "Author denies 'Ripper' obsession". BBC News. 2005-08-27. Retrieved 2010-05-21.
  8. 1 2 3 Gibbons, Fiachra (8 December 2001). "Does this painting by Walter Sickert reveal the identity of Jack the Ripper? Author rips up canvas in attempt to prove artist was killer". The Guardian (London). Retrieved 20 October 2009.
  9. ↑ Fabrikant, Geraldine (1997-03-23). "New Chapter for a Serial Spender". The New York Times.
  10. ↑ Cyberlaw update - Chapter 10: Privacy Rights and Security Issues Pearson Higher Education
  11. ↑ Dan Glaister, Crime writer Patricia Cornwell takes 'cyberstalker' to court, The Guardian, May 24, 2007.
  12. ↑ David Mehegan, Crime novelist tries to ward off Internet attacker, Boston Globe, June 7, 2007.
  13. ↑ Matthew Heller, Defaulted Defamer Ordered to Pay Crime Author $35K, Courthouse News Service, December 24, 2007.
  14. 1 2 3 Milton J. Valencia (9 January 2012). "Mystery novelist accuses her manager of betrayal". Boston Globe. Retrieved 13 January 2012.
  15. ↑ "Crime novelist Patricia Cornwell sues finance firm". BBC News. 14 January 2012. Retrieved 14 January 2012.
  16. ↑ Hughes, Mark (February 20, 2013). "Crime writer Patricia Cornwell wins $51m lawsuit against accountants". The Daily Telegraph (London). Retrieved June 20, 2015.
  17. ↑ "Mecklenburg County Register of Deeds Web Access". manatron.com. Retrieved June 20, 2015.
  18. 1 2 Brennan, Zoe (2015). "How Patricia Cornwell's lesbian affair with FBI agent ended in savage revenge". Daily Mail Online. Retrieved June 20, 2015.
  19. ↑ "Patricia Cornwell: 'Finally, I feel rooted somewhere'". The Daily Telegraph (London). 2007-11-26. Retrieved 2010-05-21.
  20. ↑ Advocate.com Editors (20 October 2009). "''Interview with The Advocate'' October 20, 2009". Advocate.com. Retrieved 17 March 2014.
  21. ↑ "Crime pays quite well for Patricia Cornwell" USA Today 3 December 2008
  22. ↑ "Patricia Cornwell: 'Finally, I feel rooted somewhere'" November 26, 2007
  23. ↑ Stepp, Laura Sessions (December 13, 2006). "A Family at Cross-Purposes: Billy Graham's Sons Argue Over a Final Resting Place". Washington Post.
  24. 1 2 Nigel Farndale (16 November 2009). "Killer Queen: Patricia Cornwell Interview". Telegraph. Retrieved 17 March 2014.
  25. ↑ Cornwell, Patricia (24 January 2015). "Facebook". Retrieved 24 January 2015.
  26. 1 2 "NEWSMEAT ▷ Patricia Cornwell's Federal Campaign Contribution Report". Newsmeat.com. Retrieved 2012-01-30.
  27. ↑ Kidd, James (2008-12-07). "I created a monster". The Guardian (London). Retrieved 2010-05-21.
  28. ↑ 1985 Gold Medallion Book Awards Winners, Evangelical Christian Publishers Association
  29. ↑ "Best First Mystery Novel by an American Author Edgar Award Winners and Nominees - Complete Lists". Mysterynet.com. Retrieved 2012-03-23.
  30. ↑ "Bouchercon World Mystery Convention : Anthony Awards Nominees". Bouchercon.info. 2003-10-02. Retrieved 2012-03-23.
  31. ↑ "Mystery Readers International's Macavity Awards". Mysteryreaders.org. Retrieved 2012-03-23.
  32. ↑ "THE CWA Dagger Awards Overview". Thecwa.co.uk. 2011-08-23. Retrieved 2012-01-30.
  33. ↑ Cornwell, Patricia (2006-01-08). "At Risk". The New York Times. Retrieved 2010-05-21.
  34. ↑ The RBA International Thriller Prize, RBA page; retrieved 2011-09-10

External links

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