Flesh and Blood

On her birthday, just before leaving for a Miami vacation with her husband Benton Wesley, an FBI profiler, Dr. Kay Scarpetta spots seven pennies lined up on a wall behind their Cambridge home. All are dated 1981, and all are so bright they could have been struck yesterday.

A call from Detective Pete Marino interrupts the puzzle. A high school music teacher has been shot dead five minutes away while unloading groceries from his car. Nobody saw or heard anything.

The shot was precise enough to kill instantly, and the only trace left behind is fragments of copper. The victims seem to share nothing, and no pattern points to where a sniper might strike next. Scarpetta, a forensic pathologist, works the case as a serial killer investigation with almost no physical evidence.

The trail runs from New Jersey to Massachusetts and then down to the waters off South Florida, where she examines a shipwreck. What she finds there points toward her niece Lucy, a gifted technologist and Scarpetta's own flesh and blood.