Cruel and Unusual (novel)

For other uses, see Cruel and unusual.

1993 crime novel by Patricia Cornwell

Cruel and Unusual

First edition

Author| Patricia Cornwell
Language| English
Series| Kay Scarpetta
Genre| Crime
Publisher| Scribner

Publication date

| 1993
Publication place| United States
Media type| Print (hardback & paperback)
Pages| 384
ISBN| 0-684-19530-5
OCLC| 62171122
LC Class| CPB Box no. 2390 vol. 1
Preceded by| All That Remains
Followed by| The Body Farm

Cruel and Unusual is a crime fiction novel by Patricia Cornwell. It is the fourth book in the Dr. Kay Scarpetta series.

## Plot summary

[edit]

Virginia Chief Medical Examiner Kay Scarpetta is called in to autopsy the body of convicted murderer Ronnie Waddell after his execution. Several days after the execution, a young boy is discovered murdered in the fashion of Waddell's earlier killings, with Waddell's prints near the body. Scarpetta, along with FBI Agent Benton Wesley and Detective Pete Marino, try to discover how a dead inmate could have possibly committed another murder after his death. As the story progresses she seeks the assistance of her 17-year-old niece, Lucy, after she discovers a strange folder on her computer.

## Characters

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* Kay Scarpetta – Chief Medical Examiner.
* Benton Wesley – Federal Bureau of Investigation profiler.
* Pete Marino – Detective Lieutenant in the Richmond Police Department
* Nicholas Grueman – Lawyer, advocate for the abolition of capital punishment, deeming it "cruel and unusual". Also Scarpetta's Georgetown lecturer, who had always seemed to be hard on Kay but it turned out that he had her interests at heart while doing so.
* Joe Norring – Governor of Virginia, Republican, Episcopalian; and held a law degree from UVA.
* Ben Stevens – Kay's morgue administrator. Is into drugs and a party-lifestyle. Being bribed by Frank Donahue to tamper with evidence.
* Temple Brooks Gault – The killer of the victims in the book. Uses the alias Hilton Sullivan. Being described by Benton Wesley as being "off the charts. If something strikes his fancy, he just does it. He's consummately narcissistic and vain – his hair, for example. He highlights it himself." He escaped apprehension.
* Lucy \- Kay's niece

### Victims

[edit]

* Eddie Heath – 13-year-old boy who was murdered in a manner similar to Robyn Naismith years before. He had a single gunshot wound to his head, which he did not immediately die of. He was found naked with his back propped against a dumpster in a back alley. It was alleged he was abducted and killed while he was on the way home from a grocery shop.
* Jennifer Deighton – When discovered in the car, originally thought to be a suicide. A hose was hooked up to the exhaust pipe. However, during the postmortem autopsy, her cause of death was asphyxiation.
* Susan Dawson Story – Kay's morgue supervisor. Was being bribed by Ben Stevens. Did so because of personal financial trouble.
* Frank Donahue – Prison warden where Ronnie Joe Waddell is interned. He released an inmate, because he "needed some dirty work done. So he selected an inmate to be his personal operative and set the animal loose."[1]
* Helen Grimes – Prison guard under warden Donahue. Was putting up Temple Gault at her place. Killed when Temple Gault's identity and place of lodging was compromised.

### Other deaths

[edit]

* Robyn Naismith – Victim of Ronnie Joe Waddell. She was killed with a single gunshot wound to her head at her home by Ronnie Joe Waddell. She was naked, with her back propped against the television. Bite marks were present on her body.
* Ronnie Joe Waddell – Convicted murderer of Robyn Naismith, and whose fingerprints are found at the scene of Jennifer Deighton. Sentenced to death by electrocution in the beginning of the book.
* Mark James – Died when a bomb placed in a trash can inside London's Victoria Station exploded at the moment he happened to walk past.

## Major themes

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* The hunt for a killer and hope for glory

## Awards and nominations

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* Cruel and Unusual won the CWA Gold Dagger for Fiction in 1993.[2]

## References

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1. ^ Cruel and Unusual, p.359.
2. ^ The CWA Dagger Award Overview Archived July 23, 2012, at the Wayback Machine

## External links

[edit]

* Author's Official Website

* v
* t
* e

Gold Dagger Award

1955–1959|

* The Little Walls by Winston Graham (1955)
* The Second Man by Edward Grierson (1956)
* The Colour of Murder by Julian Symons (1957)
* Someone from the Past by Margot Bennett (1958)
* Passage of Arms by Eric Ambler (1959)

1960–1969|

* The Night of Wenceslas by Lionel Davidson (1960)
* The Spoilt Kill by Mary Kelly (1961)
* When I Grow Rich by Joan Fleming (1962)
* The Spy Who Came in from the Cold by John le Carré (1963)
* The Perfect Murder by H. R. F. Keating (1964)
* The Far Side of the Dollar by Ross Macdonald (1965)
* A Long Way to Shiloh by Lionel Davidson (1966)
* Murder Against the Grain by Emma Lathen (1967)
* Skin Deep by Peter Dickinson (1968)
* A Pride of Heroes by Peter Dickinson (1969)

1970–1979|

* Young Man I Think You're Dying by Joan Fleming (1970)
* The Steam Pig by James H. McClure (1971)
* The Levanter by Eric Ambler (1972)
* The Defection of A. J. Lewinter by Robert Littell (1973)
* Other Paths to Glory by Anthony Price (1974)
* The Seven-Per-Cent Solution by Nicholas Meyer (1975)
* A Demon in My View by Ruth Rendell (1976)
* The Honourable Schoolboy by John le Carré (1977)
* The Chelsea Murders by Lionel Davidson (1978)
* Whip Hand by Dick Francis (1979)

1980–1989|

* The Murder of the Maharaja by H. R. F. Keating (1980)
* Gorky Park by Martin Cruz Smith (1981)
* The False Inspector Dew by Peter Lovesey (1982)
* Accidental Crimes by John Hutton (1983)
* The Twelfth Juror by B. M. Gill (1984)
* Monkey Puzzle by Paula Gosling (1985)
* Live Flesh by Ruth Rendell (1986)
* A Fatal Inversion by Barbara Vine (1987)
* Ratking by Michael Dibdin (1988)
* The Wench Is Dead by Colin Dexter (1989)

1990–1999|

* Bones and Silence by Reginald Hill (1990)
* King Solomon's Carpet by Barbara Vine (1991)
* The Way Through the Woods by Colin Dexter (1992)
* Cruel and Unusual by Patricia Cornwell (1993)
* The Scold's Bridle by Minette Walters (1994)
* The Mermaids Singing by Val McDermid (1995)
* Popcorn by Ben Elton (1996)
* Black & Blue by Ian Rankin (1997)
* Sunset Limited by James Lee Burke (1998)
* A Small Death in Lisbon by Robert Wilson (1999)

2000–2009|

* Motherless Brooklyn by Jonathan Lethem (2000)
* Sidetracked by Henning Mankell (2001)
* The Athenian Murders by José Carlos Somoza (2002)
* Fox Evil by Minette Walters (2003)
* Blacklist by Sara Paretsky (2004)
* Silence of the Grave by Arnaldur Indriðason (2005)
* Raven Black by Ann Cleeves (2006)
* The Broken Shore by Peter Temple (2007)
* Blood from Stone by Frances Fyfield (2008)
* A Whispered Name by William Brodrick (2009)

2010–present|

* Blacklands by Belinda Bauer (2010)
* Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter by Tom Franklin (2011)
* The Rage by Gene Kerrigan (2012)
* Dead Lions by Mick Herron (2013)
* This Dark Road to Mercy by Wiley Cash (2014)
* Life or Death by Michael Robotham (2015)
* Dodgers by Bill Beverly (2016)
* The Dry by Jane Harper (2017)
* The Liar by Steve Cavanagh (2018)
* The Puppet Show by M. W. Craven (2019)
* Good Girl Bad Girl by Michael Robotham (2020)
* We Begin at the End by Chris Whitaker (2021)
* Sunset Swing by Ray Celestin (2022)
* The Kingdoms of Savannah by George Dawes Green (2023)

* v
* t
* e

Works by Patricia Cornwell

Kay Scarpetta series|

* Postmortem
* Body of Evidence
* All That Remains
* Cruel and Unusual
* The Body Farm
* From Potter's Field
* Cause of Death
* Unnatural Exposure
* Point of Origin
* Black Notice
* The Last Precinct
* Blow Fly
* Trace
* Predator
* Book of the Dead
* Scarpetta
* The Scarpetta Factor
* Port Mortuary
* Red Mist
* Dust

Andy Brazil series|

* Hornet's Nest
* Southern Cross
* Isle of Dogs

At Risk / Win Garano series|

* At Risk
* The Front

Non-fiction|

* Portrait of a Killer

Authority control databases |

* MusicBrainz work

|

*[OCLC]: Online Computer Library Center number
*[LC Class]: Library of Congress Classification
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