Book of the Dead (2007)

Patricia Cornwell continues her slide toward complete incoherence. Book of the Dead begins with a typically grisly murder: A tennis star is slaughtered, her eyes filled with sand, her thighs hacked up ''as if she had been attacked by a shark.'' But after some snappy early commentary (the vic's stomach contains ''very bad lasagna''), we rarely see forensic pathologist Kay Scarpetta in action. Instead, Cornwell wanders off on bizarre tangents: the machinations of a celebrity shrink; the meltdown of sidekick Pete Marino; the health problems of subsidiary characters. It's as if the plot had been attacked by a shark. C-