Cruel and Unusual is a crime fiction

Crime fiction

Crime fiction is the literary genre that fictionalizes crimes, their detection, criminals and their motives. It is usually distinguished from mainstream fiction and other genres such as science fiction or historical fiction, but boundaries can be, and indeed are, blurred...

 novel by Patricia Cornwell

Patricia Cornwell

Patricia Cornwell 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.-Early life:...

. It is the fourth book in the Dr. Kay Scarpetta

Kay Scarpetta

Kay Scarpetta is a fictional character and protagonist in a series of crime novels written by Patricia Cornwell. The character is based on former Virginia Chief Medical Examiner Marcella Fierro, MD. The series is noted for the use of recent forensic technology in Scarpetta's investigations.-...

 series.

Plot summary

Virginia Chief Medical Examiner Kay Scarpetta is called in to autopsy the body of convicted murderer Ronnie Waddell after his execution. Several days after the execution, a young boy is discovered murdered in the fashion of Waddell's earlier killings, with Waddell's prints near the body. Scarpetta, along with FBI Agent Benton Wesley and Detective Pete Marino, try to discover how a dead inmate could have possibly committed another murder after his death.

Characters

• Kay Scarpetta
  Kay Scarpetta
  Kay Scarpetta is a fictional character and protagonist in a series of crime novels written by Patricia Cornwell. The character is based on former Virginia Chief Medical Examiner Marcella Fierro, MD. The series is noted for the use of recent forensic technology in Scarpetta's investigations.-...
  
  - Chief Medical Examiner.
• Benton Wesley - Federal Bureau of Investigation
  Federal Bureau of Investigation
  The Federal Bureau of Investigation is an agency of the United States Department of Justice that serves as both a federal criminal investigative body and an internal intelligence agency . The FBI has investigative jurisdiction over violations of more than 200 categories of federal crime...
  
   profiler.
• Pete Marino - Detective Lieutenant in the Richmond
  Richmond, Virginia
  Richmond is the capital of the Commonwealth of Virginia, in the United States. It is an independent city and not part of any county. Richmond is the center of the Richmond Metropolitan Statistical Area and the Greater Richmond area...
  
   Police Department
• Nicholas Grueman - Lawyer, advocate for the abolition of capital punishment, deeming it "cruel and unusual." Also Scarpetta's Georgetown lecturer, who had always seem to be hard on Kay but turned out that he had her interests at heart for doing so.
• Joe Norring - Governor of Virginia, Republican
  Republican Party (United States)
  The Republican Party is one of the two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Democratic Party. Founded by anti-slavery expansion activists in 1854, it is often called the GOP . The party's platform generally reflects American conservatism in the U.S...
  
  , Episcopalian; and held a law degree from UVA.
• Ben Stevens - Kay's morgue administrator. Is into drugs and a party-lifestyle. Being bribed by Frank Donahue to tamper with evidence.
• Temple Brooks Gault - The killer of the victims in the book. Uses the alias Hilton Sullivan. Being described by Benton Wesley as being "off the charts. If something strikes his fancy, he just does it. He's consummately narcissistic and vain - his hair, for example. He highlights it himself." He escaped apprehension.

Victims

• Eddie Heath - 13 year old boy who was murdered in a manner similar to Robyn Naismith years before. He had a single gunshot wound to his head, which he did not immediately die of. He was found naked with his back propped against a dumpster in a back alley. It was alleged he was abducted and killed while he was on the way home from a grocery shop.
• Jennifer Deighton - When discovered in the car, originally thought to be a suicide. A hose was hooked up to the exhaust pipe. However, during the postmortem autopsy, her cause of death was asphyxiation.
• Susan Dawson Story - Kay's morgue supervisor. Was being bribed by Ben Stevens. Did so because of personal financial trouble.
• Frank Donahue - Prison warden where Ronnie Joe Waddell is interned. He released an inmate, because he "needed some dirty work done. So he selected an inmate to be his personal operative and set the animal loose."
• Helen Grimes - Prison guard under warden Donahue. Was putting up Temple Gault at her place. Killed when Temple Gault's identity and place of lodging was compromised.

Other deaths

• Robyn Naismith - Victim of Ronnie Joe Waddell. She was killed with a single gunshot wound to her head, at her home by Ronnie Joe Waddell. She was naked, with her back propped against the television. Bite marks were present on her body.
• Ronnie Joe Waddell - Convicted murderer of Robyn Naismith, and whose fingerprints are found at the scene of Jennifer Deighton. Sentenced to death by electrocution in the beginning of the book.
• Mark James - Died when a bomb placed in a trash can inside London's Victoria Station exploded at the moment he happened to walk past.

External links

Author's Official Website