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The serialisation of Patricia Cornwell's new novel, The Front, from today in the Magazine and in The Times next week, is another career landmark for a remarkable writer. Postmortem (which inaugurated Cornwell's series of Kay Scarpetta novels) surprised many when it speedily launched a legion of Scarpetta-clone female pathologists.

Other publishers routinely use her name to sell their hopeful pretenders (usually with the phrase “As good as Patricia Cornwell!”), and it was no surprise when she received the Crime Writers' Association's Dagger prize. Cornwell's books boast tremendous energy and invention, and the levels of unsparing gruesomeness prove that she is a match for any of her male colleagues in the bloodletting stakes.

Cornwell - who combines the toughness and vulnerability of her protagonist - cannily spotted that there was a need for something other than policemen or private detectives in the crime novel, but can hardly have suspected that her combination of an “alternative profession” and a single-minded, beleaguered heroine would prove quite so groundbreaking.

Scarpetta is a marvellously multi-faceted creation and her willingness to go head-to-head with resentful, bullying colleagues affords a particular pleasure. But Cornwell has repeatedly said that she is well aware of the danger of staleness setting in with a series (however comfortable it may be for a writer to press all the familiar buttons), and rings the changes in each successive Scarpetta book, notably having Kay, persona non grata with her ex-bosses, pursue a freelance career in Florida.

Kay also struggles with a complicated relationship with her disorganised niece Lucy and her own chaotic love life. The Cornwell novels barrel along at an exhilarating pace, but the narratives have a doom-laden air, with Scarpetta exposing human venality as unerringly as she cuts into cadavers.

One to read: Postmortem (1990)

Click here to watch her new book - The Front - build chapter by chapter over the next two weeks

Patricia Cornwell interview

Patricia Cornwell sells William Sickert paintings

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