Cornwell’s ‘Trace’ suffers from clunky plot

Deep in the middle of the 13th Kay Scarpetta novel, traces of the early Patricia Cornwell emerge. Parts of “Trace’s” overly ambitious and ultimately clunky plot echo back to her first novels, when her stories were fresh and compelling and the character of Virginia’s foremost medical examiner was original.

Every now and then, Cornwell delivers a chapter or a plot twist giving “Trace” a chance to rise above the mediocre pap she’s been turning out for eight years. But then that uniqueness sinks back into a swampy morass and the reader is left with an uncontrollable urge to say, “Huh?”

Think of “Trace” as the literary equivalent of the theme song to the old TV show “Car 54, Where Are You?” A lot of intriguing and volatile situations are put into play, but none is resolved to any satisfaction.

In “Trace,” five years have passed since Scarpetta was dismissed as the state’s chief medical examiner. She handles a variety of consultant jobs, occasionally for the low-profile but highly successful private security firm owned by her niece, Lucy. She lives in South Florida, not too far from the erratic Lucy’s Pompano Beach mansion. She also spends a lot of time worrying why she and her longtime lover have been emotionally — and physically — distant since they got back together.

Virginia’s current medical examiner asks her to examine a teenager who died suspiciously. Despite requests from Scarpetta’s inner circle that she turn down the job, she returns to Richmond. It’s not a happy reunion. Her old building is being torn down, her former office runs chaotically and the medical examiner who asked for her help is rude, condescending and humiliates her in front of others in myriad ways.

Why Scarpetta doesn’t repack her bags and go back to South Florida where she could get a start on putting up hurricane shutters isn’t clear. Sure, she becomes interested in the teen’s death, which leads to another undisclosed murder, but there’s always another case.

As Scarpetta toils in Richmond, a killer who has a link to her past has moved to South Florida, where he is targeting Scarpetta and her niece.

Cornwell sets up numerous plots that never mesh in “Trace.” Scarpetta’s sidekick, Pete Marino, is assaulted. One of Lucy’s employees is stalked and nearly killed. Lucy’s undercover operations are threatened. The FBI, Homeland Security and a neighborhood swingers’ club are dangled into the plot but never reeled in.

Scarpetta is often pushed into the background as Cornwell focuses on other characters, including one of her most uninteresting and stupid villains with the cliched name of Edgar Allan Pogue. It seems like an afterthought when the plot finally reveals itself in an exceedingly creepy scene.

“Trace” certainly is a hundred times better than last year’s dense, melodramatic “Blow Fly,” in which a character’s Lazarus-like return betrayed the readers’ credulity and trust. But just when you find that trace of thrills, “Trace” is off on another tangent, disappearing into a snowy wooded trail as does one shoulder-shrugging nonsensical scene.

In the end, the readers who enjoyed the author’s early novels may feel like Scarpetta does at the beginning of “Trace” when she sees her old building being demolished: “that old building you still miss and feel deeply about is being torn down.” So it is with this series.