| dc.description.abstract | Patricia Cornwell's new police procedural series featuring volunteer cop/rookie reporter Andy Garcia, Chief of Police Judy Hammer and Deputy Chief Virginia West has been described as DOA (Dead on Arrival) by disgruntled fans. The negative reception of the series, which so far comprises three titles (Hornet's Nest, 1997; Southern Cross, 1998; and Isle of Dogs, 2001) is surprising, since the popularity of Cornwell's former series, the ten-book series featuring Virginia medical examiner Kay Scarpetta, made her the number one best-selling female crime writer in the United States in the 1990s.
In my article, I argue that Cornwell follows a long line of female predecessors who have "realigned" the crime novel genre to accommodate new values in society, new gender roles, a growing female readership, and the march of women writers and characters into this once so masculine arena. Her Scarpetta series gave the public a superhuman heroine and pleased many readers with the role reversal: an empowered woman leading the battle against evil. In spite of the fact that Cornwell champions gay rights through the character of Kay's beloved niece, Lucy, the Scarpetta series remains firmly anchored within a conservative, patriarchal worldview
Although Cornwell recycles familiar elements of the police procedural and the classic crime formula in the "Garcia" series, she does not cement or reinforce social norms. Instead, she introduces inversions and subversions of gender in the books which parody the gendered assumptions of patriarchal society. The series is a new departure with the vestigial beginnings of a radicalized worldview. However, the farcical tone and exaggeration in the series undermine the latent criticism of hegemonic structures of power and sexuality in American society and have thus confused and disappointed Cornwell's fans. Her new worldview lacks the consistency needed to make it habitable. The author will have to reconsider her underlying intentions in order to resuscitate this series | en |
