THE BODY FARM: Black Mountain, North Carolina: a sleepy little town where the local police deal with one homicide a year, if they're unlucky. The discovery of the corpse of an eleven-year-old girl sends shockwaves through the community. Dr Kay Scarpetta, working on a similar case in Virginia, is called in, but the investigation baffles her - until she visits the curious pathologists' playground known as the Body Farm . . . FROM POTTER'S FIELD: The body is found propped against a fountain in a bleak area of New York's Central Park. The unknown female's death points to a chillingly familiar modus operandi - it appears that Temple Brooks Gault, Scarpetta's nemesis, is back at work. Summoning all her reserves of courage and skill, Scarpetta must track this most dangerous of killers, leading inexorably to an electrifying climax amid the dark, menacing labyrinths of the New York subway.