Patricia Cornwell (born Patricia Carroll Daniels June 9, 1956) is a contemporary American crime writer. She is widely known for writing a popular series of novels featuring the heroine Dr. Kay Scarpetta, a medical examiner.
A descendant of abolitionist and writer Harriet Beecher Stowe, Cornwell was born in Miami, Florida. Cornwell says that there are numerous links between herself and the main character in her novels, Dr. Kay Scarpetta, a forensi...
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Patricia Cornwell (born Patricia Carroll Daniels June 9, 1956) is a contemporary American crime writer. She is widely known for writing a popular series of novels featuring the heroine Dr. Kay Scarpetta, a medical examiner.
A descendant of abolitionist and writer Harriet Beecher Stowe, Cornwell was born in Miami, Florida. Cornwell says that there are numerous links between herself and the main character in her novels, Dr. Kay Scarpetta, a forensic pathologist. They are both Miami-born, divorced, and had difficult relationships with their late fathers.
Cornwell's father, Sam Daniels, was one of the leading appellate lawyers in the United States and served as a law clerk to Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black. Cornwell later traced her own motivations in life to the emotional abuse she says she suffered from her father, who she says walked out on the family on Christmas Day 1961.
In 1961, Cornwell's family moved to Montreat, North Carolina, where her mother was hospitalized for depression...
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