The fingerprints say the murderer is the man who's just been executed ...At 11.05 one December evening in Richmond; Virginia; convicted murderer Ronnie Joe Waddell is pronounced dead in the electric chair. At the morgue Dr Kay Scarpetta waits for Waddell's body. Preparing to perform a post-mortem before the subject is dead is a strange feeling; but Scarpetta has been here before. And Waddell's death is not the only newsworthy event on this freezing night: the grotesquely wounded body of a young boy is found propped against a rubbish skip. To Scarpetta the two cases seem unrelated; until she recalls that the body of Waddell's victim had been arranged in a strikingly similar position ...For more about Patricia Cornwell and her books visit her website at www.patricia-cornwell.com