This follows directly on from the previous book, Depraved Heart (2015, USA), and I have to wonder if the books in this series can be read independently anymore. Certainly I didn’t read the first few books of the Scarpetta series in order originally, much as I didn’t for both Sue Grafton’s Alphabet series (despite the titles; yes, I know) or Sara Paretsky’s VI Warsawski novels – both of which, incidentally, I recommend more than I do Cornwell’s Scarpetta series. My point being the early Scarpetta novels were pretty much self-contained, but now they form trilogies and short series within the larger series, and Chaos (2016, USA) is definitely a sequel to Depraved Heart, which itself continues on from Flesh and Blood (2014, USA). Chaos at least seems to be the end of it as psycho-genius Carrie Grethen is captured and committed to a secure psychiatric hospital by the end of the novel. And if that constitutes a spoiler, you’ve not been reading this series very long…

The road from chapter one to the end in Chaos is not all that different to the preceding books in this series within a series. There were, however, a couple of changes I hadn’t seen coming (and which may have been spoiled by the recent TV adaptation). Once again, the novel is structured around a murder which presents contradictory evidence. A young woman, whom Scarpetta had spoken to earlier that day, is found dead on a path in a park by the Harvard campus. She was on her bike, but has been thrown from it, and the cause of death is almost impossible to determine.

Meanwhile, Benson and Lucy are aware of events happening elsewhere in Boston, but keep Scarpetta in the dark. Scarpetta’s sister, Dorothy, the flaky children’s author, is flying up for a visit, and it seems she and Marino became “very good friends” in Miami during the events of Flesh and Blood. Most of Chaos takes place at the murder crime scene – the location, and the heat wave affecting Boston, have complicated the investigation.

Of course, Grethen is the murderer, and Scarpetta spends much of Chaos speculating how she might be involved, despite being entirely off-stage for the entire narrative. Benson’s and Lucy’s secretiveness seems less justified here than in earlier novels, and in places it feels like Cornwell was more interested in describing how uncomfortable Scarpetta finds the heatwave than in actually solving a murder.

Chaos is a quick read, and feels somewhat unsatisfying. The murder is solved, and further horrors are avoided, but it all seems weirdly secondhand, given that Grethen never makes an actual appearance. On the one hand, I like that Cornwell is focusing on Scarpetta much more intensely; on the other, keeping her in the dark for much of the novel is getting a little wearying. There’s third-person omniscient POV, and there’s tightly-coupled first-person POV, but having other members of the cast expressly not reveal information to the narrator for plot reasons…

Five books to go – assuming Cornwell doesn’t publish another before I reach the end, and she probably will. The next book in the series is Autopsy (2021, USA), which was adapted for the contemporary narrative strand in the recent TV series. It will be interesting to see what changed with the move to the screen.