Southern Cross

Written by Patricia Cornwell

Narrated by Karen White

Following in the path of her blockbuster Kay Scarpetta thrillers, Patricia Cornwell's novel is a testimony to the singular versatility and narrative power of one of the country's best-read storytellers. In Southern Cross, she casts her shrewd and knowing eye at the men and women in blue, in a story of corruption, scandal, and murder.

Richmond, Virginia, is a city rich in Southern history, yet overrun by such modern-day problems as drug trafficking and escalating juvenile crime. Former Charlotte police chief Judy Hammer is brought in to clean up the police force—the most difficult assignment of her career. Now, in the face of overwhelming public scrutiny, she must navigate through local politics and prejudices to solve a brutal murder that springs straight from the rotting core of Richmond's heart…

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperAudio
• Release date: Mar 17, 2015
• ISBN: 9780062376237

Patricia Cornwell

Patricia Cornwell is recognized as one of the world’s top bestselling crime writers and the author of the Scarpetta series. Her novels have been translated into thirty-six languages in more than 120 countries and won numerous prestigious awards, including the Edgar, Creasey, Anthony, Macavity, and the French Prix du Roman d’Aventure prize. Cornwell, a licensed helicopter pilot and scuba diver, actively researches the cutting-edge forensic technologies that inform her work.

Reviews for Southern Cross

[robeik_1 · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

I bought this book in a secondhand shop in Deventer (Netherlands) after reading another book Cornwell and enjoying it - what a silly mistake!The characters are not developed, and parts of their stories are hardly relevant. The plot is totally unbelievable: A kid hacks into a web-site and changes the screen saver on a police computers in people's homes ?!?!? Computers in homes that are turned on remotely !?!? Some weird URL created by someone who knows nothing about computers!?!? And the reference at the start of the book (also in the book title) to the strong families in the south never reappears. I'm not a woman, but would a woman really leave hints of another lover to bring to jealousy a previous lover and current colleague? And a cat who makes sure he sees these clues? 1/5 stars - because I was not allowed to enter 0/5

[sturlington_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This is one of Cornwell’s “alternate” books – not a Kay Scarpetta mystery, but a thriller featuring a female police chief from Charlotte, North Carolina. This time, she’s in Richmond, with a huge cast of characters who stories all merge into an unclimactic climax. While I liked this one better than its predecessor, Hornet’s Nest, it still didn’t quite gel. I just got the feeling that these characters and this story didn’t mean as much to Cornwell as the recurring characters in her much better Scarpetta novels.

[aliceanna-1 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

A very puzzling choice. Abandoning Kay Scarpetta, the author seems to have lost focus. Too funny to be taken seriously, yet too violent to be taken as a comedy. I don't know what her intent was, but it was a mixed bag, lacking coherence. Not bad, but not good.

[cloggiedownunder · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I read the 3 Andy Brazil books against advice from more than one person. I wanted to see for myself if they really were that bad. I liked the Scarpetta books (although I thought that the endings of some of those books were too rushed, too contrived). The Andy Brazil books are nothing like those! Hornet's Nest is probably the best of the three, although the characters are shallow and unconvincing and the plot is weak and implausible. There is some humour and some sexual tension which is frustrating for lack of relief. 5/10. Southern Cross degenerates from this. Ms Cornwell seems to be having fun at our expense, but the result isn't really funny or vaguely satisfying. 3/10. Isle of Dogs, well, how much lower can you go? What were you thinking, Ms Cornwell? Or what drugs were you on? This book was ridiculous! I persisted to the end of these books because I wanted to give them the benefit of the doubt. Not sure why I bothered. Even if one reads these as tongue-in-cheek romps through the workings of a Police Dept, the final book is hugely disappointing. 1/10. Scarpetta fans who pay full price for these books will feel angry and very much cheated. Luckily I bought mine 2nd hand. Readers whose first taste of Cornwell is one of these books will never buy another. Whatever you do, don't pay full price for these books!

[wyvernfriend · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

very readable story of a new Police Chief hired to clean up the crime rate, the second in a series I'd be tempted to read the first one. I loved the characters, the way they react and their animals.

[paulagalvan-323293 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

In this book, our heroes, Officer Andy Brazil, Deputy Chief Virginia West, and Chief Judy Hammer, have relocated to Richmond, Virginia, to improve the police department with a new computer program called COMSTAT—which fails miserably. The author uses every play on words imaginable—anagrams, aptronyms, inaptronyms, and malapropisms—mixed with racial slurs to tell a humorous story about cops and their antics. However, it's a story I can see some people lacking a sense of humor, including the residents of Richmond, might take offense to.

[carol420 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Police chief Judy Hammer is tasked to clean up the city of Richmond, Virginia in the span of a one year term. She is assisted by Officer Andy Brazil and Deputy Chief Virginia West. As a team, they will clean up Richmond and fix all of the police department's problems, with an ultimate goal of uniting all the police departments in the South, an okay beginning plot until you find they have one year to do this. Then you find that they intend to do it with a computer system. There is, in all this, a murder, and it is told with the usual Patricia Cornwell aplomb, but there is never any mystery and this is not a whodunit. I gave it two stars because despite the distracting names and animal characterization, there WAS a story, albeit a small one. I ended up really liking the character "Weed", but found the villain too villainous to be believable. I think Patricia Cornwell should stick to Kay Scarpetta.

I know I am going to butt heads with Patricia Cornwell die-hard fans but I will xeplain the 2 star rating. In the very beginning, we are introduced to several characters such as Popeye, our main character's dog, who is presented as though she can think like a human. Some of the story lines come from the dog's mouth; " "Popeye licked her owner's face and felt pity." " Popeye knew her owner was denying the grief and the guilt she felt about her late husband's death." How in the world could a dog, even stretching your imagination, know that ? Later, we meet Niles the cat, who has the same uncanny ability as Popeye the dog. There are other characters: Bubba (real name: But Fluck, wife's name is Honey), Smudge, Gig Dan, Smoke, Weed Gardener, Divinity, Wally Fling, Captain Cloud, Mr. Curry, Mr. Pretty, Mrs. Fan, ad nauseum. We are expected to accept these characters as real people. Each time I came across a new name, I took the book less and less seriously. We then meet the chairman of the Governor's Blue Ribbon Crime Commission (whose name is okay but suspiciously similar to Amelia Earhart), Lelia Ehrhart, who talks like this: " You're hanging out by a thread on a limb all alone on this one!". The only explanation we get is that Ms. Ehrhart was raised in Vienna and Yugoslavia and does not speak English well. I re-read several paragraphs, thinking my eyes had finally bought the farm, when I realized this was intentional. The plot? You won't be sure what it is until well past half of the book,

[dougwood57 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

I have enjoyed several of Cornwell's Kay Scarpetta novels, but found this story hard to finish. The story is implausible in just about every respect from beginning to end. The Richmond Police Chief, her deputy and their young assistant are brought in from Charlotte on a short-term (one-year????) federal grant to clean up the Richmond department. No way is that going to happen. They all freak out when a kid hacks in to the Richmond cops computer system - don't they have an IT department? Somehow, this invasion cripples police computers all over the world! The story reels to an absurd conclusion when the police and interested bystanders play 'dog pile on the rabbit' to stop the bad guy, but somehow the chief herself has to come to the rescue.

[hermit_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I understand that this is not the normal style of writing for this author. Instead of a serious serial killer story you should expect a dark comedy. She takes a pot shot at everybody and hits the nail on the head every time. The most important lesson to be learned from this book is that there are too many people out there hearing things that haven't been said and others who do not pay attention at all. The narrative gets a little disjointed at times. But the cast of characters are tied together in the end. On the serious side, there is a teenage gang leader and the kids he scares into the gang. One note: though cute, I usually only like talking animals in fantasy novels.

[babemuffin · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

The plan was to read Masie Dobbs for this tag but after I read Hornet's nest for the Crime tag, I really wanted to pick up Southern Cross as it's the sequel to Hornet's nest. I like Hornet's nest better than Southern Cross. This book seems a little bit disjointed to me, a bit all over the place kinda feeling.After the death of her husband, Chief Hammer decided to throw herself into work and has came up with a proposition to spend 12 months with state police departments who are 'in shambles' to shape them up. The first department to benefit is Richmond, Virginia. Hammer brought along 2 assistants namely Deputy Chief West & Andy Brazil. Unfortunately, things just were not working well for them. How do they tackle the Fishteria virus which disabled their network and the escalating violence in relation to the ATM robberies? And how do these things relate to each other?

[gypsysmom_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I zoomed through this book. In Southern Cross, Cornwell takes us close to the sometimes zany (but always threatening) experiences of big-city police, in a story of corruption, scandal, and robberies that escalate to murder. The setting is Richmond, Virginia, where former Charlotte police chief Judy Hammer has been brought, by an NIJ grant, to clean up the police force. Reeling from the recent death of her husband, and resented by the Richmond police force, city manager, and mayor, Hammer is joined by her deputy chief Virginia West, and rookie Andy Brazil on the most difficult assignment of her career. In the face of overwhelming public scrutiny, the trio must find the link between the desecration of Confederate president Jefferson Davis's statue and the brutal murder of an elderly woman. I will add that this book was much funnier than I expected. The fight between the police dispatcher, Patty Passman, and the traffic cop, Rhoad Budget, has to have been put in for pure comic relief. And there are other bits here and there that offset some of the horrific details. As a Canadian, the pervasive use of guns is somewhat offputting. When Bubba goes to the gun dealer to by a gun to replace the ones stolen from his garage and talks about the rule that a person can only buy one handgun every 30 days, I was appalled. The only use for a handgun is to shoot another person and why you would need to buy one every month is beyond me.

[delphimo_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Hammer, West, and Brazil go to battle crime in Richmond, Virginia. Cornwell revels in exploring historic information. After each novel, I investigate to verify the data. Jefferson F Davis and his second wife, Varina, are buried in Hollywood Cemetery, in Richmond, Virginia. The cemetery also contains a statue of Jefferson Davis. Hammer, West, and Brazil fight the growing juvenile crime spree. Many of the minor characters are notable, such as Bubba. In the beginning of the book, Bubba appeared to be that stereotypical rendition of the Southern good ole boy that loves guns, dogs, and beer. The final chapters show Bubba as a dimensional character ready to risk his life for someone. Another character is Pigeon, a down on his luck veteran who has a mangled hand and foot. Pigeon aids both the police and the troubled boy, Weed. The juveniles in this story show a world of bitterness and ignorance. Smoke is a privileged son that hates all and only wants his moment of glory. Divinity gives her body freely to all in hopes of finding acceptance and love. Weed just wants to enjoy art and music class and to live in his own world, but falls prey to Smoke. I felt a little disappointed that Cornwell did not explain all that happened after Hornet's Nest. Also, the computer glitch problem with the police files seemed out of context with the rest of the story.