The answer was chief medical examiner Kay Scarpetta, Cornwell's heroine. Scarpetta is independent, feisty and someone Cornwell knows better than she knows herself. To honor that close relationship ...

(CNN) -- Patricia Cornwell's Kay Scarpetta novels, involving a medical examiner who often ends up on the trail of serial killers, have sold millions of copies. The author dropped by CNN's New York ...

(CNN)-- It has been 20 years since best-selling crime writer Patricia Cornwell began work on her first novel in the series chronicling the cases of forensic analyst Dr. Kay Scarpetta. Now ...

From Bigfoot to Jack the Ripper to UFOs, when something piques Patricia Cornwell ... those are the basis, Cornwell tells me, ...