A book review by Danny Yee © 1998 http://dannyreviews.com/
A serial killer is murdering visiting businessmen, and Charlotte chief of police Judy Hammer and deputy Virginia West are under pressure. To make things worse, West has rookie journalist Andy Brazil riding with her as a public relations stunt. This sounds like vintage Patricia Cornwell, but Hornet's Nest has a rather different feel to her Kay Scarpetta novels. It lacks their narrative grip and their brooding menace: the streets of Charlotte may be dark and dingy and crime-ridden, but they always appear floodlit and safe to the reader, who is never left in any real tension. The identity of the killer is revealed by an omniscient narrator simply in passing and ends up being almost irrelevant. The attention is on the relationship between West and Brazil, and indeed Hornet's Nest is really more of a romance than a mystery.
