The reviews of Trace on Amazon.com, over three-hundred of them, are much poorer than the nine or so here. I thoroughly agree with the Amazon.com reviewers. Cornwell started downhill with Isle of Dogs, a terrible book. After that I only read Blowfly, to give her another chance. I thought Blowfly was nearly as bad. I bought Trace just on spec, expecting little...and got less. Everybody in the book is unreasonably angry, the sub-plots drag on, Benton risks his relation with Kay to work with a totally uninteresting woman (Lucy's ex-lover) and his efforts come to nothing. Marino magically gets the baddie in the end, though it's unclear how. And the baddie is a most unbelievable wacko. A lot of fuss is made over trace elements found at two crime scenes and no real resolution is ever given. A construction worker may or may not have been murdered...who knows and who cares. A most unlikeable Dr. Marcus is introduced, with a weird hang-up, and then dropped. When I finally finished the book, doggedly working through it in case it got better, my question was: Why did I bother? Terrible book.
