Patricia Cornwell

Patricia Cornwell was born in 1956 in Miami. She worked for five years as a crime reporter for the "Charlotte Observer" and later as a program analyst at the Virginia Forensic Center. She has written fifteen books to date, twelve of which are crime novels featuring the brilliant forensic pathologist Dr. Kay Scarpetta. Her first novel, "Postmortem" (1990), is the only work worldwide to have won five literary awards (Edgar, John Creasey, Anthony, Macavity, and the French Prix du Roman d'Aventure) in the same year. Since then, each of her books has become a global publishing success, garnering millions of devoted readers everywhere. Patricia Cornwell is considered today the most significant representative of crime literature in the USA and is the highest-paid female author in the world: in 1996, she received twenty-four million dollars from the publishing house Putnam for her next three novels. She currently lives and works in Richmond, Virginia.