Patricia Cornwell

Patricia Cornwell's most recent number-one bestsellers include Blow Fly, Portrait of a Killer: Jack the Ripper -- Case Closed, and The Last Precinct. Her earlier work includes Postmortem -- the only novel to win the Edgar^®, Creasey, Anthony, and Macavity awards and the French Prix du Roman d'Aventure in a single year -- and Cruel and Unusual, which won Britain's prestigious Gold Dagger Award for the year's best crime novel of 1993. Her fictional chief medical examiner, Dr. Kay Scarpetta, won the 1999 Sherlock Award for best detective created by an American author.