A preliminary examination reveals that the body is covered in a fine dust that under ultra-violet light fluoresces blood-red, emerald-green and sapphire-blue, and physical evidence links this to another series of disturbing homicides in Washington, DC. The body of a young woman has been discovered inside the sheltered gates of MIT, draped in an unusual cloth and posed in a way that is too deliberate to be the killer's first strike.

Sylvia Wilson is a professional veterinary surgeon, amateur singer and actor who lives in Gloucestershire with her husband, dog, and horses.After working on one of the worst mass killings in US history, Chief Medical Examiner Kay Scarpetta returns home to recover, but an unsettling call drives her straight back to work. Dust is the 21st novel in the series, and there is no sign of Kay Scarpetta retiring in the near future. With a satisfyingly labyrinthine plot, this is vintage Cornwell.

There are points when the first person narrative produces odd non-sequiturs as Kay’s thoughts stray to matters away from the murders, particularly to the Connecticut massacre or to Benton’s problems with his boss. It takes a while to get going, as Kay drags herself from her sickbed into a wet night and all but the last couple of chapters take place over an 18-hour period. Written in the first person and present tense, the latest Scarpetta novel has an almost stream of consciousness feel. There are links between the company and the earlier murder victim, but can Kay and Benton identify the real killer and prove their case before the FBI takes over and commandeers all the evidence? Then the team is called to a massacre at a financial company in nearby Concord.

Her husband, FBI profiler Benton Wesley, is away investigating them, but is being sidelined by a new boss, who is determined to prove that the killer in the Washington murders is a boy who has been missing for 17 years and that the new murder is unrelated. Scarpetta is struck by the similarity to a series of murders in Washington, although there are also differences. The body is carefully posed and is covered with a fluorescent dust that glows in rainbow colours under ultraviolet light. Her lead investigator, Pete Marino, has left her to return to his former role as a detective with the Cambridge, Massachusetts, Police Department, and now he is calling her at 4am about a body found on a playing field at the MIT campus. After assisting with the aftermath of a school massacre in Connecticut, Dr Kay Scarpetta is in bed with the ‘flu.

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