Patricia Cornwell

Patricia Cornwell won a judgment of $50.9 million against her former financial managers in federal court in Boston on Tuesday. Cornwell is the author of the bestselling Kay Scarpetta mystery novels. Cornwell accused her former money management firm Anchin, Block & Anchin LLP and its former principal, Evan H. Snapper, for negligence in the handling of her ­finances. According to Cornwell, not only had the firm improperly invested $89 million of her money, it had also made illegal campaign contributions that drew the attention of the FBI, undermined her work and even traumatized her dog . The money management firm was paid about $40,000 per month to handle Cornwell's finances, which included the renovation of her Massachusetts estate and leasing a lavish apartment for her. The managers claimed that it was Cornwell's own extravagance , including leasing expensive private jets, that was to blame.

Patricia Cornwell won a judgment of $50.9 million against her former financial managers in federal court in Boston on Tuesday. Cornwell is the author of the bestselling Kay Scarpetta mystery novels. Cornwell accused her former money management firm Anchin, Block & Anchin LLP and its former principal, Evan H. Snapper, for negligence in the handling of her ­finances. According to Cornwell, not only had the firm improperly invested $89 million of her money, it had also made illegal campaign contributions that drew the attention of the FBI, undermined her work and even traumatized her dog . The money management firm was paid about $40,000 per month to handle Cornwell's finances, which included the renovation of her Massachusetts estate and leasing a lavish apartment for her. The managers claimed that it was Cornwell's own extravagance , including leasing expensive private jets, that was to blame.

Edgar Allan Poe, from whom all mystery fiction is thought to flow, made scientific deduction one of its ingredients. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, inventing Sherlock Holmes' celebrated monograph on cigar ashes, made the great detective a kind of one-man amateur crime lab (although he also occasionally used science as a bluff to induce miscreants to confess).

Depending on how one counts, it was a meeting either six months or almost 20 years in the making. The major participants? Two pop-culture luminaries. One was Angelina Jolie, the Oscar winner who launched 1,000 paparazzi and carried off with swagger such action flicks as "Wanted" and "Lara Croft: Tomb Raider." The other was Patricia Cornwell, one of the world's most commercial authors. The topic was Kay Scarpetta, Cornwell's signature character, the medical examiner in 17 mystery novels.

Patricia Cornwell's name comes with more than a whiff of myth and expectation. Almost every woman writing thrillers with extreme violence gets compared to Cornwell's bestselling work featuring forensic pathologist Kay Scarpetta. Interviews focus less on the books and more on Cornwell's Armani suits, personal security concerns or her obsession with solving the Jack the Ripper murders.

In the Richmond morgue, Patricia Cornwell is alive. It's a busy Monday in early May, and there are a dozen bodies to be examined. Cornwell smiles as her former supervisor and old friend Marcella Fierro, the chief medical examiner of Virginia, takes the gift from the box. It's an autopsy saw. A gray $800 Stryker that looks like a hand-held mixer with a crescent-shaped blade on the end.

Depending on how one counts, it was a meeting either six months or almost 20 years in the making. The major participants? Two pop-culture luminaries. One was Angelina Jolie, the Oscar winner who launched 1,000 paparazzi and carried off with swagger such action flicks as "Wanted" and "Lara Croft: Tomb Raider." The other was Patricia Cornwell, one of the world's most commercial authors. The topic was Kay Scarpetta, Cornwell's signature character, the medical examiner in 17 mystery novels.

If mystery writing phenom Patricia Cornwell offered up anything like the sordid little yarn playing out in a courtroom here, publishers would laugh her out of the Whodunit Hall of Fame. But that isn't to say what's happening in this historic village won't sell her novels. You have only a pale version of a good mystery here: A defrocked FBI agent--once on White House duty--tries to convince a jury of his innocence, by reason of insanity, for a grab bag full of felonies.

What the world needs now may not be another serial killer novel, but if we're going to get them anyway--and we are--we could do worse than Patricia Cornwell. Cornwell is the author of "Postmortem," "Body of Evidence" and others in the series featuring Virginia Chief Medical Examiner Kay Scarpetta. Cornwell knows whereof she speaks, having worked for six years in that same office, and this is what lifts "From Potter's Field" several rungs in serial-killer-novel-hell: We learn something.

Bestselling crime writer Patricia Cornwell has filed a libel lawsuit in Richmond, Va., against another author and is asking a federal judge to bar him from posting defamatory messages about her on the Internet. Cornwell wants the court to enforce an injunction issued in 2000 against Leslie R. Sachs and seeks a broader ban to prevent Sachs from further writing negatively about Cornwell on websites or allowing such statements to remain on those sites.

Patricia Cornwell's name comes with more than a whiff of myth and expectation. Almost every woman writing thrillers with extreme violence gets compared to Cornwell's bestselling work featuring forensic pathologist Kay Scarpetta. Interviews focus less on the books and more on Cornwell's Armani suits, personal security concerns or her obsession with solving the Jack the Ripper murders.

You can't listen to what people tell you. Years ago I was asked by an agent to read a series of articles from the Philadelphia Inquirer by a young journalist named Mark Bowden. I read them and thought they were absolutely stunning. They became the book "Black Hawk Down." It was the first real explanation I had ever read of modern warfare. But Bowden was not a well-known writer, and this was a subject not a lot of people were interested in. I knew it would be hard to sell it. I took it out to a list of producers.

A federal judge has ordered a self-published author to cease an Internet vendetta in which he has accused bestselling crime novelist Patricia Cornwell of plagiarism, bribery, anti-Semitism and even plotting to have him murdered. Those claims are among 45 specific lies that Leslie R. Sachs has spread about Cornwell, Judge Norman K. Moon said in this week's order granting Cornwell's motion for a permanent injunction.

Bestselling crime writer Patricia Cornwell has filed a libel lawsuit in Richmond, Va., against another author and is asking a federal judge to bar him from posting defamatory messages about her on the Internet. Cornwell wants the court to enforce an injunction issued in 2000 against Leslie R. Sachs and seeks a broader ban to prevent Sachs from further writing negatively about Cornwell on websites or allowing such statements to remain on those sites.

Bestselling American crime writer Patricia Cornwell has taken out full-page newspaper ads to defend her investigation into solving a 19th century killing spree. The ads in two British national newspapers on Saturday came days after one of the papers accused her of having an "obsession" with the Jack the Ripper case.

*--* SO. CAL. RATING Fiction *--* *--* 1 The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini (Riverhead: $14) A writer returns to Kabul to rescue the son of a childhood friend. 2 Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon (Vintage: $12) An autistic teen seeks a killer. 3 Angels & Demons by Dan Brown (Pocket Books: $7.99) A Harvard scholar uncovers a vendetta against the Catholic Church.

Bestselling American crime writer Patricia Cornwell has taken out full-page newspaper ads to defend her investigation into solving a 19th century killing spree. The ads in two British national newspapers on Saturday came days after one of the papers accused her of having an "obsession" with the Jack the Ripper case.

A federal judge has ordered a self-published author to cease an Internet vendetta in which he has accused bestselling crime novelist Patricia Cornwell of plagiarism, bribery, anti-Semitism and even plotting to have him murdered. Those claims are among 45 specific lies that Leslie R. Sachs has spread about Cornwell, Judge Norman K. Moon said in this week's order granting Cornwell's motion for a permanent injunction.

Patricia Cornwell has worked as a police reporter for the North Carolina Charlotte Observer, as a computer analyst for the chief medical examiner in Richmond, Va., and as a volunteer police officer. But she is best known for the wonderful and wonderfully scary crime novels that feature a forensic master, Dr. Kay Scarpetta. In "Portrait of a Killer," she shifts her criminal expertise from contemporary Virginia to late 19th century London.

I've read almost a dozen of Patricia Cornwell's books, most of them masterful. "The Last Precinct" is the best of the lot. It is about deception, double-dealing, suspicion, grief, guilt, duty, friendship, sadism and the rule of law. Familiar Cornwell-land, Richmond, Virg., is as crime-prone as ever. Foul play flourishes there, malignancy thrives and murder prospers. It is Christmas, an uneasy season, and Dr.